Shimmering Splendor Read online

  The hand that had been playing with her ear ran down her neck to her shoulder and began to push down the loose neck of her gown. The mouth followed the hand, kissing down her throat, down her chest, down her breast, and seized the nipple. Psyche’s knees loosened, but her monster was ready. The arm that had bared her breast was behind her shoulders, the other behind her thighs. She was lifted and carried. Dimly an alarm bell rang inside her, but she could not listen. Her gasps and sighs drowned it out.

  When she was laid down on a bed, she knew why the alarm had rung, but it was too late—and she did not care. A hand had slipped under her skirt and was gently caressing those swollen lower lips. She cried out, clutching tighter to her the head that sucked her breast, lifted her hips to drive the fingers in, in to fill the void. They moved, but only to touch and touch and make her more frantic until she let go of her lover’s head and tried to seize his hands. She found instead his naked hips and then one hand, which guided hers to the blind, seeking shaft.

  Psyche had never known a man, but she knew what she held and she knew where it belonged. A moment later the sword was poised above the sheath, but it did not plunge in and pierce her. It went a little way, filling the lips but leaving the throat empty, and then withdrew. Psyche heaved upward in pursuit, only partly aware that a hand had returned to her breast, rubbing and squeezing gently at the engorged nipples. She was, however, violently aware of the sensations produced, that tickling that was not a tickling coursing down her body and intensifying the need to be filled.

  He had come in again, farther but not far enough, and then withdrawn almost completely. Having heard more than once of inconsiderate husbands who satisfied themselves and left their poor wives still craving, Psyche locked her legs around her lover’s hips and drove him down just as he himself thrust downward with what he hoped was enough force to tear her maidenhead but hurt her as little as possible. The combined power was more than either had reckoned on. Both shrieked with pain and stopped moving, but Eros was well lodged.

  Psyche felt the ultimate fool. With the return of the ability to reason, she realized first that Teras could not possibly have satisfied himself yet, and second that his slow invasion had been meant either to ease the pain of the loss of her maidenhead or to excite her so much she would not notice. She was about to explain that her mind had flowed away into the sensations of her body when Teras’s lips came down to barely touch hers.

  “The pain is over, love. Now is all joy,” he murmured.

  Nor did he fail in his promise, largely because the shock he had experienced had reduced his engorgement. For a few strokes at least, his thinned shaft passed easily. And for those few strokes he had been busy with lips and tongue and fingers, putting her back into the trance of sensation in which there could be no fear. That cause for tightened muscles missing, her own blood and moisture eased the pain of stretching into one more sharp peak of pleasure, which built and built until it exploded into an agony of joy that made her cry aloud and tighten her grip on her lover until he gasped for air.

  That grip and the convulsions of her body ignited his so that only moments after she had subsided into limp satisfaction, his climax came. Fortunately, she had been very limp, far too exhausted to raise an arm to push him away, not because she was sated and selfishly did not care about him, but because her mind was too blank to understand why he was still moving. By the time the tempo of his thrusting had quickened frantically and he had stiffened, uttering choked cries, thrust once, twice more, groaned, and collapsed, Psyche was alert enough to enjoy his climax almost as much as she enjoyed her own. Both lay quiet, still entwined, too tired and content to consider greater comfort.

  After a time, Teras breathed, “Am I crushing you?”

  “You are no lightweight, but I am strong,” Psyche replied, smiling.

  Teras chuckled and rolled off her but lay close, still touching. From the utter blackness around Psyche when she allowed her eyes to open for a moment, she knew she was still within the black cloud. Although she no longer felt the horror of being engulfed that had filled her earlier, she closed her eyes again.

  “You certainly are strong,” Teras said, his voice reproachful. “I think I may be permanently bent from that push you gave me.”

  Psyche forgot the blackness surrounding her and burst out laughing. “Don’t be so silly. I may be innocent, but I’m not so innocent as that. It can’t be bent like a piece of metal.”

  “Is that so?” Her hand was seized and laid on his rod, which was now limp and a little curved as it lay against his thigh. “See, it is bent.”

  “I am blind within your blackness, but what I feel is that if I keep my hand where it is, your ‘bent member’ will straighten out at once.”

  “You flatter me. I am not so strong as that.” But even as he spoke he could feel himself swelling and he laughed. “Perhaps I was wrong. Apparently you are a greater inspiration to me than any other woman.”

  Psyche removed her hand. “I am not sure I wish to be one among many.”

  “You are not, Psyche, nor will ever be.” The beautiful voice had become strained and harsh. “I was dying—not my body, but inside myself. You saved me—not by your beauty, but by your disdain of it, by your willingness to laugh, by your honesty and your courage. There will be no other woman, ever.”

  “That is a strong avowal,” she said softly.

  She had meant to mock, having heard from other women that every man promised faithfulness as instinctively as a dog barks at a stranger. But there was in the voice and in the slight tension of the body resting against hers an intensity that she could not mock. It occurred to her suddenly that she was ten times a fool. All that talk of women…poor monster, how many women could he have known? She felt the shoulder beside her shrug.

  “It is true.” The voice was light with laughter again. “But if you are going to be jealous of a monster, you are quite mad.”

  He had just stated her own thought aloud; nonetheless, she was speaking the truth when she said, “I cannot think of you as a monster when you are so perfect to my hands.” Then she added, “But jealousy is stupid anyway. Even if you were as beautiful as Eros, it can only bring grief, often unmerited—as I know too well. No, Teras. I will not seek causes to accuse you of betraying me with other women.”

  “Would you care?” He turned toward her and drew her to him so that their bodies were pressed together.

  Psyche thought for a long moment. “Yes and no,” she responded at last. “I suppose pride forces me to want to be first.” She smiled. “If I knew you had another lover…I might resent it, but I think you would have to fling the fact in my face. It was the way you said ‘any other woman’ as if I were one in a long string stretching far into the past and far into the future…” Her voice faded, and then she said, “But if you have already lived so long, Teras, there will be a future for you far beyond mine. You will watch me grow old and die…”

  “I will not live long beyond you, my Psyche,” he whispered against her lips. “As for growing old—I did not choose you for your outer beauty, although it caught my eye, but for that inner being which can only grow stronger and more perfect with age. And as for dying—remember, I am already very old. All that there can be in life I have already experienced—except love. You have brought to me the last, the best, that life can offer. Without you, for me, there can be no life. I will not mind dying.”

  Only words, Psyche told herself, but she clutched him closer, somehow convinced by the casual, almost smiling, tone of voice of her inestimable value to him, not for an accident of birth, which another accident like breaking her nose could wipe away, but for what she had built for herself. The arms that welcomed her in a comforting hug now loosened enough for the hands to begin to wander over her. Psyche sighed.

  “Are you too sore, beloved?” he murmured a little while later, lifting his lips from hers. “You do give an old, old monster surprising strength, but I can wait if you need to rest.”

  Psyche
chuckled breathlessly. “I notice you did not ask sooner, you monster. Now, sore or not, I am too eager to deny you.”

  “Perfect,” he sighed, arching his body so he could kiss her breast. “Eager, yes, but not ready. You can still talk sense.”

  With that he brought his mouth down and soon, as evidenced by her incoherent cries, she was ready as well as eager.

  Chapter 11

  The following morning, Psyche half awoke, stretched her hand to touch her lover, and came fully alert with the shock of realizing he was not there. For a moment she was furious, feeling that Teras had used her and left her. In the next moment she recalled what she would have seen—half the bed, half her body swallowed into a black nothing. Involuntarily she shuddered. Teras knew how she felt about the blackness; he had left her to spare her.

  Nonetheless, while Psyche summoned the servants, bathed, dressed, and breakfasted, she worried at the subject. She knew she was being deprived of one strong link between a mating pair—the early-morning pillow talk, the planning together of the work of the day. The question was, could she bear to hold such talk with “nothing,” or worse, a blackness that was a negation of everything?

  In the dark, it did not matter much if her eyes happened to be open when part of her was outside of his aura. Mostly she kept her eyes shut and thus was unaware of anything except the feel of his warm, strong, straight body. But in the daylight, keeping her eyes closed would not help. One sees light through shut eyelids when there is light to see. To be constantly reminded of the black cloud by alternating dark and light beyond her closed eyes would make coherent thought impossible.

  She would prefer a tusked, horned, gray-skinned horror, she thought. Her mind stopped on the exasperated phrase, and she examined the idea. Would she really prefer to see Teras in his monstrous form? Could she separate what her eyes beheld from what her hands felt—or would she feel the disfigurements because she could see them? And there were far worse forms, far more disgusting deformities, than what she had been envisioning. Better leave well enough alone, she decided.

  Naturally, she could not. Even when she found on the table beside her bed the carefully wrapped piece of himation stained with Teras’s blood, she could not focus her mind on it enough to decide what to do. Fearful that any method of destroying the “keepsake” might harm her poor monster, she found a small box into which to place it and buried it at the very bottom of her clothes chest.

  It was a long day. Whatever she began, she soon found her mind drifting to the surprising delight the monster—no, Teras—had wakened in her body, which only brought her again to the question of whether she could accept him better as a creature frightening to the eyes or something that froze the soul from not being there at all. Again she ate too fast at dinnertime and found herself with nothing to do when the meal was over. This time, however, she did not need to pretend to herself that she was not eager for his company. She went out at once and sat down on the bench to wait.

  Psyche had hoped the sight of her would bring Teras sooner, but to her chagrin it was quite dark before she noticed the blotting out of a portion of the lawn that flowed toward her.

  “You are late,” she said, standing up and holding out her hands.

  They were seized, drawn into the cloud, kissed. Psyche thought the breathing she felt was quicker and harder than usual. Did that mean he had been hurrying? From where?

  “Teras,” she said, looking into the dark about where his head should be so she would not see her arms, faintly pale in the starlight, disappear completely at the elbow. “Oh, Teras, is your monster form so very horrible? Do you think I might become accustomed to it so you could be with me during the day as well as at night? It is really very dreadful to see parts of my body disappear, even though I know they will reappear unharmed. I am not sure I could bear that in the full light of day, but I was sorry to wake and find you gone.”

  She was enveloped, kissed soundly, and then held more gently as Teras murmured, “Thank you. I am well assured that I did not hurt you or frighten you, that I did pleasure you. I wish I could have stayed with you, but—” he sighed. “I see what I did was wise. If you think my monster form preferable to this darkness, I did well to go. But Psyche, my love, I could not spend much more time with you right now in any case.”

  “You are so busy?” Psyche asked in amazement. Aside from her own desire for company, she had been envisioning poor Teras crouched in some secret place, waiting miserably for darkness to fall. “What do you do all day? Do you make ‘monster’ appearances or something?”

  He laughed ringingly. “You mean to frighten naughty children into good behavior? No, I do not ‘appear’ in monster form like an actor strutting a stage. I’ve told you more than once that I am Aphrodite’s servant. Sometimes there is little for me to do, but right now I am arranging a most tangled business for her.”

  “Yes, you have told me, but I cannot imagine Aphrodite using a monster or a black nothingness to deliver her orders. Eros was very beautiful—at least, his face and body were beautiful, but his heart was colder than death.”

  “Colder than death…” Teras sighed. “Yes, it was, but do not blame poor Eros. He is as old as I, and as you should know, beauty can be a heavy burden to bear for a long, long time.”

  “You have borne worse, and your heart is not dead.”

  He had relaxed his grip on her while they spoke; now he pulled her tight against him again and kissed her lips, her cheeks, and then her lips again.

  “My heart was dead as his until I found you, Psyche. Your vital spark has lit again the fires that were quenched within me. But Aphrodite does, indeed, need my services. She is small and frail, not at all fit to defend herself if that should become necessary, and—” he chuckled “—I fear she is most easily distracted. In a complicated matter like this, it is best if I manage the affair.”

  “What affair? Oh, I had better not ask that, since it is Aphrodite’s business.”

  Psyche heard the sharpness in her voice and was rather ashamed, but Teras either did not notice or did not care. He laughed aloud.

  “Actually, it is not Aphrodite’s business at all,” he said. “She is doing a favor for Hephaestus, who is doing a favor for Tethys, who is doing a favor for Poseidon. It is very amusing—except that Dionysus is involved and he has Seen something that he does not understand and that troubles him—and that troubles me.”

  For a moment Psyche was numb with awe. God names one after another tumbling from Teras’s mouth in a way that bespoke long personal knowledge. Then she reminded herself that they were not gods, only Gifted beings from a land over the mountains. And she remembered, although it seemed like years ago, that she had said so much to Teras and he had not been angry. Nor had he confirmed or denied her deduction. This seemed like a good time to press for that answer.

  “But I thought that Poseidon was supposed to be a god. Why does he need Aphrodite’s help? Moreover, why does he take so circuitous a route to it? Why not ask her himself?”

  “Ah,” he said, “I see you have not got much further in The History of the Olympians, or you would have discovered that Poseidon does not come to Olympus.”

  As he spoke, he turned her so that she faced forward, keeping one arm firmly around her waist and drawing her arm around him. When he began to walk, she knew they were going toward the house, although she was totally blind. She was surprised by not being the least afraid; in fact, she was distracted from fear by how much her sense of touch was heightened. The play of his muscles as he moved was strongly apparent to her, and she matched her stride to his, stepping forward confidently. He kissed her temple.

  “No,” she said, “I haven’t read any more because that kind of book needs to be discussed with someone, and I dare not ask you the thousand questions that come to my mind.”

  “Why not?”

  He sounded honestly puzzled and realizing that she could not spend the rest of her life walking on eggshells she said, “I do not wish to ask questions that wi
ll hurt you. I would be glad to know more, but the history of your people is no life or death matter to me. To cause you pain merely to satisfy my curiosity is unfair.”

  “You are as caring of heart as you are beautiful, Psyche. But you need not fear to ask questions. I think you have healed me.”

  Healing of a hurt so deep it drove poor Teras into instinctive flight one time and into mute endurance another did not come that quickly or easily, Psyche thought. But if he felt enough ease to urge her to ask questions, she could pursue her point, at least concerning those he had mentioned without stress. “Well, then, perhaps you will give me a straight answer. Is Poseidon a god? Is Aphrodite a goddess? And Zeus?”

  “In one sense, no,” he said. “We are certainly not all knowing nor all powerful. But in another sense, compared to your folk, who fear and destroy your Gifted, the more powerful among us are like gods.” He stopped and pushed her gently forward. “We are at the door, love. Go in and take your lamp.”

  When she emerged from the utter blackness of Teras’s embrace, Psyche blinked in the golden glow for a moment, hesitating between going to the andron or to the book room. A moment later, she had lifted the lamp and turned toward the stairs. She was halfway up before she realized that the vague notion of showing Teras the book was ridiculous. She knew Teras was familiar with the work and was unlikely to demand to see her source. Color rose in her face, but she went on without faltering, smiling a little despite her blush. Her real reason for choosing the book room had nothing to do with books at all. It was the proximity of the bedchamber, not of the scrolls of text, that made that room so inviting.

  She smiled again when she passed her bedchamber door, but she did not hesitate. A brief memory of the pleasure to be found there stirred in her body and she let it come and enjoyed it without even a glance at the door. That was for later, the sweet crown of her few hours of companionship. If Teras could not come to her in daylight or would not because his undisguised form was so dreadful he did not believe she could bear it even now when she knew it was just a seeming, then it behooved her to turn night into day. She would enjoy talk and his company first, then they could go to bed. If she slept late in the morning, so much the better; it would make the following day shorter.