InDescent Page 5

  Jackson closed his eyes and exhaled, submitting to his captivity. Of course he could undo the iron bindings and free himself whenever he chose. But he didn’t want to. He felt energized rather than weakened. Standing even straighter, he inflated his chest and flexed his muscles against the restraints, enjoying the cold heft of the chain that wound just above his hips. This was almost, he thought, like accepting the bite of the vampire—a stirringly sensual experience. And the sensuality was intensified by the power he now had over his captors. Seemingly helpless and fully displayed, his body would entice these women the way it had once enticed a blood drinker.

  He definitely was not Christy’s slave. Despite the chains and manacles, he was the one in control tonight. He was the master.

  No surrender made willingly, even eagerly, was really a surrender at all.

  Since Christy could hardly be trusted, Jackson sent out his sight to keep track of what was happening in the room. Sending out the senses, a sophisticated projection technique he’d perfected some years ago, allowed him to be cognizant of an environment, even become active in that environment, without moving his physical body. He could see, hear, touch, smell, and taste; he could present himself in whatever form he imagined; he could even move objects. The technique was complicated and, therefore, psychically and physically draining. It couldn’t be employed for an extended period of time. An hour or so was about all Jackson could manage, but he’d discovered he could do impressive things if he was energized enough and forcefully directed his power.

  So, although his eyes were closed and his head downturned, he sent out his sight to watch the coveners. It was fairly easy, although he couldn’t focus on all of them at once.

  The witches, heads still lowered, began singing as they walked farther into the Circle. Many snuck glances at the near-naked man tethered almost spread-eagle to the eastern pair of posts. Forming a queue, they took turns reaching into a bowl on the altar that contained a pear, an avocado, a carrot, dill, endive and ginseng root, all sprinkled with sesame and caraway seeds. A cattail lay across the top.

  Each woman took a bite from the pear. Each then stood at the eastern perimeter of the Circle, facing the “mangod”. He felt their anticipation. They’d all probably heard about him. Furthermore, he knew his power had been pulsing through the room from the moment he’d entered it.

  He wondered vaguely if any of the witches recognized the name he’d chosen. It wasn’t some predictable name culled from Arthurian legend or Greco-Roman mythology. The twelfth-century story of Héloise and Abelard was real, infused with both extreme indulgence and extreme denial of passion.

  From beneath his hood, Jackson watched as the first witch, Cyrene, approached him. Cyrene attempted to raise his head and remove his hood. These efforts to steal a kiss were supposed to be symbolic. The witches would only pretend to try and pretend to fail. When they were through, the High Priestess would of course waltz right up to her High Priest and take him with ease. Then the “handmaids” would begin “preparing” him.

  But it wasn’t happening that way. The mangod had locked himself into utter stasis. His body didn’t move by so much as an inch. Leda, after taking her turn, whispered that the hood felt glued to his head and shoulders. It couldn’t be moved, truly couldn’t be budged. Hyacinth even tried ducking beneath the draping cloth and approaching the mangod’s face from below, but it was as if, she told her sisters, she’d hit an invisible barrier. She even claimed there was no face beneath the cowl—only an eerie pocket of darkness.

  One of the others muttered, “He must be practicing some kind of impromptu sorcery.”

  Lady Alessandra had begun to look bewildered and anxious. It was understandable. She likely hadn’t had much experience, if any, with genuine magic. And she certainly wasn’t used to esbat and sabbat meetings being wrenched from her control.

  Her consternation amused Jackson. He fought down an urge to laugh. None of this was in the script—a fact that clearly disturbed the Priestess.

  It disturbed her so much she departed from the course the rite was supposed to take. Even though three witches had not yet approached him, Lady Alessandra stepped in front of them, seething with impatience. She angrily muttered something and grabbed Jackson’s hood with both hands.

  As if it were part of a bronze sculpture, it didn’t move. He’d made sure of that.

  Quaking, the flustered High Priestess slid her hands down the mounds of his chest and over the plane of his abdomen. Jackson was unaffected by her touch. Viciously, she yanked the chain around his waist. Still, no movement.

  “What’s going on?” Hyacinth whispered.

  Nobody answered. Obviously, nobody knew.

  Margot touched Lady Alessandra’s arm. “Is he even warm?”

  The High Priestess irritably motioned for the witch to leave her alone. She slipped her fingers beneath the top of Jackson’s loincloth. Her hands, moving in opposite directions, glided around his midsection. Suddenly, she gripped the upper edge of the cloth and tried ripping it off his hips.

  The fabric didn’t stir.

  Now fierce in her determination, the thwarted High Priestess thrust her hand under the loincloth, apparently trying to reach for Jackson’s crotch. Almost immediately, she pulled her hand back and let out an exasperated growl.

  “There’s something in the way,” she grated.

  Leda stepped forward. “You mean—”

  “I mean, there’s something in the fucking way!” Alessandra’s faux-Egyptian eyes had taken on a manic look.

  Jackson pursed in a smile.

  “The same thing happened to me,” Hyacinth whispered, “when I tried getting beneath his hood.” She looked at the other witches. “There’s like a force field around him or something.”

  “But not around all of him,” the High Priestess said, sounding both imperious and cunning. She stood straighter and swept an arm in the mangod’s direction. “Handmaids, prepare him.”

  Uncertainly, the witches glanced at each other. They must have felt hesitant about approaching Abelard. He clearly had powers that were alien to them.

  Then one of them stepped forward. Jackson couldn’t tell which one it was, for her hood still hung low over her face. She tentatively ran a hand along his arm from shoulder to wrist, as if relishing the sweep of his muscles, the feel of his hair-embellished skin. He felt a rise of warmth as his body responded to the touch. Stepping closer, the woman slowly slid her hand over the top of his hand, her slender fingers slipping between his longer, thicker ones.

  She must be the one. Jackson was nearly certain he would couple with this witch. He’d earlier ensured that only the most appropriate partner would be able to move him. His fingers flexed slightly. The woman kissed the back of his hand, letting her lips linger on his skin.

  Emboldened by their sister’s success, the other witches came forward. Jackson sensed their appetite. They’d allowed themselves to begin craving him, to give in to their desire for him. The rite called for it, after all.

  The witch who’d enlivened him stepped back. Maybe she wanted to watch her sisters prepare him. Maybe watching turned her on. It turned him on to think about her arousal.

  Twenty eager hands slid covetously over Jackson’s body. The hood and loincloth remained securely in place, though, because only his Chosen One would be able to remove them. Fingernails insistently dug into his ass cheeks as one woman after another gripped his hips and ground her own hips against his crotch. Red lips crushed against and sucked at his pectoral muscles, his nipples. Wet tongues licked his skin. Heavy breasts, peaked with excitement, rubbed against his chest and back. The women writhed and moaned, clutching at him, feverishly kissing and biting his flesh.

  Jackson’s cock, still covered, rose. Little by little the loincloth began to tent out. His chest heaved as his breath came out in coarse gusts from beneath the hood. Suddenly there was so much focused hunger in the room, it seemed infectious.

  The woman who’d been hanging back, the one whose
touch had first moved him, suddenly came forward. Jackson hoped that she found restraint impossible. It had certainly gotten more difficult for him. All that crazed fondling had done what it was supposed to do. He was going to have to fuck somebody soon.

  Lurching toward him, the woman reached for the hood that still shadowed his face. Her fingers sank into the heavy green velvet. Jackson stopped breathing for a moment, waiting for confirmation of his assumption.

  The hood fell away like melting ice cream.

  Slowly, he lifted his head and stared directly into her eyes.

  “Hello, Jack,” she whispered. “Although it’s really Jackson, isn’t it?”

  His brows dipped. “Mikaela?”

  She shook her head. “Hester.”

  He was stupefied. Had she known all along he was here? “Aren’t you going to claim your kiss?” he asked in a muted voice, wondering if this odd coincidence was really a coincidence.

  The thought unsettled him. His arousal came perilously close to waning.

  With one hand scrabbling at his damp skin—shoulders, back, chest—and the other grasping his hair, Mikaela urged his head downward. Jackson acquiesced. He had to; he’d set certain standards for a partner, and she’d met them.

  Mikaela quivered as she caressed him. A small sigh issued from her mouth…and then his lips melded with hers. Jackson’s excitement mounted again as she mewled beneath his kiss.

  He funneled his attention into the contact and let himself anticipate release. He certainly needed it. No matter what bizarre confluence of circumstances had brought him and Mikaela together again, Jackson decided to take advantage of the situation. He owed it to the coven and he wanted it for himself. At least he found Mikaela attractive. At least he wouldn’t have to force intimacy.

  With a metallic rattling and series of thuds, Jackson’s restraints fell away. He’d willed them to, since he couldn’t count on the resentful Lady Alessandra to remove them. He also made Mikaela’s robe drop to the floor. Immediately, he began caressing her face and hair, fondling her breasts and ass. It felt good, pressing his neglected body against another body. Jackson cast off all reservations and compunctions and let his rigid cock poke at his partner’s belly.

  “You’re trembling,” he whispered against Mikaela’s ear. “Are you nearly ready?”

  “Yes,” she said breathlessly. “No.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t want you to stop kissing me, touching me. I like it very much. It happens to me so rarely, I want it to last.”

  The confession made Jackson smile. He found it sweetly disingenuous. “I hadn’t intended to stop. I’ve only begun.”

  As he continued to hold her, he made them rise off the floor. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said, lifting Mikaela’s legs and folding them around his hips. “Just trust me.” Again, he kissed her.

  Together they floated like a pair of clouds over the coveners’ heads. Jackson realized he was grandstanding, but he genuinely enjoyed levitation. It wasn’t like floating in the Dead Sea. There was no sensation of any tangible element beneath one’s body. And it wasn’t like weightlessness in a gravity-thin environment. He was able to control the process well enough so there was no haphazard bobbing about.

  “I do trust you,” Mikaela said. “And you must come to trust me.”

  Jackson heard the shrill notes of Lady Alessandra’s voice, protesting this unexpected turn of events. “I’m supposed to be with him! The High Priestess should be doing the coupling!”

  “Ignore her,” Jackson murmured to Mikaela as they drifted down and came to rest on the bed. He straddled her supine body.

  “I find it very easy to ignore her,” Mikaela answered. “When I need to.” Gazing up at him, she writhed lazily within the brackets of his legs.

  Jackson smiled into her eyes. She was trying to seduce him, even though he didn’t need to be seduced. His own hunger, long unsatisfied, was seduction enough. He felt his expression change as it took on a lascivious edge. His chest heaved more distinctly.

  Mikaela’s gaze moved there. She stared at the trident tattoo that angled down his left pectoral between shoulder and nipple. It had begun to fluoresce, which it often did during sex magic. She studied it curiously but with no sign of shock—a reaction, or lack thereof, Jackson found strange. Just like her lack of alarm when he’d lifted them into the air. But he couldn’t let himself dwell on these anomalies. He couldn’t be distracted.

  Grasping his erection, he guided the head downward. Mikaela opened her mouth and curled out her tongue, shameless in her desire. Jackson paused as a memory stabbed at him.

  Suddenly, none of this seemed right. The whole scenario was beginning to feel like an ill-fitting suit. He lifted his cock away from her mouth. When she reached for it, he said, “No, not yet.”

  Again Mikaela twisted beneath Jackson, staring greedily at the erect cock he was withholding from her. But she said nothing. She didn’t flatter or implore or upbraid him. Still, he could read her frustration in her movements. Her hands scrabbled along the tense muscles of his thighs, which were so hard no impression could be made by her fingers. So she scored his skin with her nails. Jackson winced. Driven on, she grasped his thighs more tightly, scratched them more wildly.

  He had to do something before she ripped him to shreds. And before he made himself look like an inexperienced, bumbling nerd. Damn it, what was with him? He’d lost all momentum, all the natural velocity he normally built up during sex.

  Concentrating, which he shouldn’t have had to do, Jackson guided his cock to one of Mikaela’s breasts. The plump head skated over then jabbed into the outer swell of flesh. Mikaela pushed and rubbed herself against it. Her fingers speared the dark tangle of his pubic hair as her thumbs curled beneath his shaft and massaged its underlying tough cylinder. His hips jerked slightly. Parrying her stimulation, he circled her nipples with his cockhead—first one, then the other. Reflexively, Mikaela arched her back.

  When Jackson stopped, she quickly curled forward. Palming his tight, dense balls, she slid her forefinger behind them to his perineum. He groaned as his cock twitched…but groaned as much from discomfort as arousal. Apparently goaded by this reaction, Mikaela moved her finger toward the swell of his ass and slipped it between his cheeks. With one fingertip, she lightly rimmed his opening.

  “Don’t,” he gasped.

  “You dislike that?”

  Jackson didn’t know how to respond. “Just…let me pleasure you.”

  He hadn’t anticipated all this exploration, how it would make him feel. He hadn’t anticipated the images it would stir. However naively, he’d expected only to play with a woman and then couple with her for the sake of the ritual. From the moment he’d agreed to appear at this esbat, that’s all he’d expected and all he’d wanted. Just to get the job done, quickly and efficiently.

  Mustering his determination, he began flicking and jabbing Mikaela’s nipples with his cockhead. He tried not to jab it into her mouth. He was tempted to, but the mere thought of being publicly fellated filled him with aversion.

  He soon realized that hands other than Mikaela’s were caressing his balls and ass. A saliva-slicked finger ran firmly along the length of his cock. Someone nipped at his neck.

  Before Jackson realized what was happening, his body was wrenched to one side. It was enough to break whatever faltering stride he’d managed to achieve. Christy, standing near his right shoulder, had grabbed him and now tried to kiss him.

  “Get away from me,” he grated.

  The other women, all naked now, either sat on the edge of the bed or knelt on the floor beside it. Some held dildos. Others pleasured themselves with their fingers. One even crouched behind Jackson, her arms curled around his torso, hands running provocatively from his chest to his groin and back again.

  Jackson, lost to his bewildering unease, hadn’t realized until now that all the members of the coven had been participating in their foreplay. Even his outburst wasn’t enough to make them pause. Th
ey kept feeling up themselves and each other and the couple on the bed, reveling in the joys of the flesh.

  “No kissing,” Jackson said to the group. “And no penetration.” He thought he’d seen one of them holding a butt plug.

  Impatiently, Mikaela reached for him. He lowered himself on top of her.

  “No kissing?” she whispered, her hands lost in his spill of hair. The cord had fallen away.

  “With one obvious exception,” he answered, reminding himself of her special status.

  Mikaela didn’t simply return his kiss. She began sucking at him, as if he could feed her. But Jackson wasn’t in it. He just wasn’t in it. He was somewhere else, and he knew damned well where that was.

  “Fuck me,” she said, breathless and limp.

  Jackson stared down at her. “I don’t need to be told.”

  He felt beneath the mattress, where Christy had assured him she kept a stash of condoms. Sure enough, there was a whole line of packets there. He slipped one out, opened it, and rolled an absurdly ribbed, black sheath over his hard-on.

  Mikaela lifted her legs, bending and spreading them, inviting him.

  Smiling, he tried to counteract some of his previous brusqueness. “How gracious of you,” he whispered.

  To achieve some semblance of passion, Jackson summoned more concentration as he entered her. It was humiliating, having to try so hard to be involved. He used to wallow in this kind of pleasure. He used to delight in prolonging it by being erotically creative. A female partner’s satisfaction had always been part and parcel of his own satisfaction, and women used to compliment him on his finesse.

  Now, his body simply wanted to be free of its agonizing, ambiguous tension.

  Mikaela arched her back to receive him. Her hips wriggled beneath his weight as she sought just the right positions for stimulation. She dug her fingers into the meager flesh of Jackson’s pelvis and held him in place as she moved. He felt her vaginal muscles hugging his rod.

  Jackson couldn’t remain completely still. Like a piston, his cock needed to move. He rocked against and within her, trying to secure his own release.