Mating Dance
Chapter 4
I stayed at her house for three days, her student again, listening to her, repeating the words of her spells, spells to confuse, to seduce, to enrapture. I pitched my voice as she did, an even finer control than all our women are taught, subtly modulating tone and volume. I practiced her calculated motions: catching a man’s eyes and then slowly, gently lowering the lashes of my own, letting him imagine the softness of that touch, then opening the eyes a little wider than usual, then deploying a slow, close-lipped smile; with polished nails absently stroking the corners of my mouth, then trailing down my throat to the beginning of the valley between my breasts. I learned how to watch for opportunities: a man sitting down to read a document in his lap presented the chance to bend down beside him, as if following along in the text, so that my hair would brush silkily along the side of his neck and leave a warm trace of my scent around him. And of course, she demonstrated, with some refinements, how a massage purported to ease tension or help an injury heal could be used to seduce, then to enchant.
For all those three days and nights, I studied Leila’s arts for conjuring lust. As she bid me goodbye after breakfast on the fourth day, she smiled knowingly and said, “As you know, Champion Jessica, practice makes perfect. And another thing, Daughter. Do have him shaved. People are beginning to talk.”
That morning, I gave orders to Jak’s trainers that his afternoon session should be followed by a drink, prepared to my specifications, and a very hot bath. Then I had him brought to me at the infirmary annex. He arrived with his skin still flushed from the bath, deep shadows between his collar bones and the steep ridges of muscle stretched from neck to shoulder. I took a calming breath.
He waited until the others had left. “Owner,” he said, trying to sound as indifferent as possible to his question’s answer, “What do you want?”
“You’ve been overtraining,” I said, moving just a little too close to him for his comfort, and definitely close enough for him to breathe in the scent I had applied a little while earlier. “If you keep this up without something to clear out the fatigue residue, your muscles will actually weaken. One of these days, you’ll tear one and be useless for three months,” I said, as if dismissively, turning my back on him and bending at the waist to pick up the vial of massage oil from a low shelf, and to show him the thin fabric of the gown I wore rounding and stretching over my hips.
He shook his head, trying to focus, to weigh what I was saying. It was interesting that he did not even try to deny the overtraining; he must have already been feeling the negative effects. “So how does this help?” he asked.
“We have a discipline of massage that penetrates deep into the tissues,” I said, slowly beginning to lower and smooth my voice as I held up the bottle of oil, “Very deep.” As I pictured pushing my oil-smoothed thumbs into those sharply-cut muscles in his upper back. I almost felt as if I could push that image into his mind directly, even though that is not my talent; I have always had to work indirectly, to woo the minds that I influence.
“Oh, yes, I can feel these tight muscles,” I said, really as an excuse for gliding my fingertips down that ridge of muscle from the base of his neck to the crown of his shoulder. Did he shiver a little?
“So where are the trainers?” he asked, shaking his head again, and I read his pretending not to know the answer as he tried to clear his mind of a musky scent, of the sight of a richly curved hip, of a murmuring voice that had already made itself at home in his mind, a light, gliding touch.
“I’ll be doing it,” I said, and he swallowed.
“Why?”
“Because I’m better. I taught them everything they know.” Then I caught his eye and blinked mine very slowly, as Leila had taught me, so that he had time to contemplate the feather touch of my lashes against my lower eyelid. He blinked too, unaware of it, I think. I left my eyes half-closed, hooded, while I gave him a sleepy smile.
“—But not everything I know.”
I watched the double meaning register on his face.
“Also, the treatment works better if the healer knows the injured well. And I know you well. With what we have been through together, you cannot deny that.”
He sighed, as if in weary resignation, but under it I thought I could feel a hint of—well, curiosity, at least.
I had modified the traction table, removing all the pulleys and straps, along with their mountings, and had opened the padded head-well, so that when he was on his stomach, there would be no torsion, no strain at all on his neck muscles. I had even moved the table to the other side of the room, and I had closed the heavy draperies that had just been put up for the winter. The light in the room was provided by candles whose wax was blended with oil of lavender, an herb which I had selected carefully for its subtle sedative power.
“Lie on the table,” I said. “On your stomach. Rest your chin on the padding at the edge of the opening. Make sure that your neck is relaxed.”
“The last time I let you get behind me,” he said as his head settled into the padded well, “it ended badly.”
Was that actually a joke, an inside joke about our duel? Was he getting over his endless self-indictments, his shameful suspicion that it was especially shameful to lose to a woman, or was it just the drug in the wine getting to him? Either way, his reaction was very promising, so naturally I fumbled it.
“Well, at least you got a good nap out of it,” I answered, laughing into a gaping silence, noticing, too late, the muscles in his upper back bunching tensely. The fact that he could make one joke about what had happened to him did not mean that I could. He thought I was mocking him.
“Anyway,” I continued, as if I had not just stepped on my tongue, “ I’m going to put this towel over your lower body. I want you to slip your pants off.”
His back muscles were so tense after my previous remark that I did not think they could get worse. I was wrong; they stood out as if he were rowing a galley into a stiff wind. Maybe the happy-juice in his wine had not yet begun to work, maybe he hadn’t drunk enough of it, or maybe I had made too big a blunder for a drug to mask.
“Relax,” I said, striking a tone between teasing and spell-casting. “I won’t remove the towel until you beg me to.”
“You just get funnier and funnier,” he grumbled into the well, but I could read that his tension was ebbing.
“It’s a gift,” I said.
I had selected lavender massage oil too, aromatic, but not so strong that it would sting him or me if it got on anything that was . . . not his back. I poured a pool of it into my palm, rubbed my hands together to warm it, and smoothed the oily hands over those hard ropes of muscle. Its fragrance has long been known to soothe the mind.
“This will work a lot better if you work with me,” I told him, and it was certainly true, in more than one sense. “I want you to take some deep breaths, and as you feel my hands pressing into your muscles, sliding over them and driving the fatigue poisons out, feel your whole body relax, but focus especially on those muscles where you feel my hands, focus on letting go of those muscles, not fighting me, letting go . . . breathe in . . . and out, and relax . . . relaaax. That’s better . . . I can feel your muscles release, release their tension, that must feel incredibly good after all that work, just to let them rest, yes, rest, and those muscles between your neck and shoulders, doesn’t it feel good as my hands squeeze them and slide along them at the same time, clearing out the weariness, the ache? I can see the flush as new blood flows into them, healing, easing, your neck looks so relaxed now . . .”
I’m surprised that we don’t have a god of massage in Mar. We hate pain and love pleasure—not just for ourselves, but as forces of existence. To heal injury by replacing pain with pleasure—what could be better? What thought could be more arousing?
“Now we’re ready to move to your upper back, those muscles were so tight until now, doesn’t that feel good, my hands gliding over them, loosening, soothing, and now your lower back, the big muscles of your lower back, and I will need to climb up on the table to put my weight on them, they’re so big and strong, so that I can ease the tightness there . . . breath with me again, in . . . and out and relax . . . good, you’re doing very well, and it must feel so good to let that tension and pain go, to feel your back muscles so long and loose, so easy and soft right now. Now your hips and buttocks, they’re firm and strong, but so tired, you have worked them so hard, let’s let them rest, they feel so heavy . . .” Hearing some of the things that came out of my mouth, I began to wonder whether I was enchanting him or me.
As I massaged the thighs and buttocks muscles deeply, over and over, on the return stroke I would sometimes let a finger trail lightly against his scrotum, just a flicker of touch. Was I was doing it on purpose? I wanted him to wonder. A few more times, and I saw the big muscles of his buttocks clench, while he squirmed a little on the padded table, as if to adjust his position for something that was taking up more room now than it had a few minutes ago. I smiled; now I knew what Leila was always smiling about. The power to arouse someone I had set out to arouse was, well—arousing, especially doing it to a man with such a fine body. I remembered, though, that this massage had to achieve a very delicate effect, a subtle balance between entrancement and seduction, in which entrancement would at last prevail.
“Now, now,” I softly pretended to scold him, “No clenching. Just let everything go, and enjoy the sensations, the comfort, just relax deeply, deeply, because what you really need right now is to SLEEP, MY FRIEND JAK.”
In a moment, his muscles turned to jelly under my hands. “That’s very good, Jak,” I crooned approval at him, “very good, you’re soo relaxed now, soo comfortable and sleepy listening to my voice soothe you, feeling my hands soothe you. Soo deep in comfort and trust. Deeper and deeper. You know I am your friend, Jak, and we trust each other. We have known the truth of ordeal together, and since then we have always told the truth; it comes naturally. Easily and naturally. You’re so relaxed Jak, so relaxed that you can speak easily, easily and truthfully.”
I paused and took a deep breath of my own.
“Are you attracted to me, Jak?”
There was a long silence, just as when I had asked him whether he hated me. This time, though, I wanted to hear the word that slurred drowsily out of his mouth: “Yes.”
“You would like to make love with me?”
“Yes.”
“You would like an exchange of bliss between us, to wipe out the hurts we had to exchange once? Yes,” I answered for him, “when we exchange pleasure, when you come inside me and feel me come around you, it will wash away that old pain, which already seems so long ago, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it, Jak?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, it’s unreal, like a bad dream. And of course you want to forget a bad dream, and I can help you do that. Now stay in this very relaxed, blissful, healing state while you turn over for me, turn over on your back, that’s right.”
I slipped off my straddled perch on his thighs to let him turn over, and the erection that he had been lying on arose fully. I licked my lips, remembering what Leila had shown me with that perfectly lifelike, if slightly exaggerated, phallus of polished marble.
Standing beside him, I kissed him softly on the mouth, catching his lower lip gently between my teeth, then releasing it and running my tongue around the inside of his cheek. With my oily fingers, I stroked from the root of his scrotum to the head of his penis. I slid my tongue down his neck into the hollow above his collarbone, brushed my lips softly over the chest muscle just below it, and then rimmed his nipple erect with my tongue. My mouth drifted lower and performed the same dance in his navel, then down into the crease of his groin, then up the shaft, to the swollen head of his member.
“How does that feel?” I whispered. He moaned a little. “Yes,” I answered for him again, “It’s good, so good. And it’s going to get better. Such pleasure, such overwhelming pleasure we will share, share equally, because we are equals, Jak. We had to exchange hurts, but we ended as comrades and equals. We fought as equals, remember? Of course you do. Each of us hurt the other, and each of us endured hurts. Now there is a settlement, all hurts forgiven, and we will seal it by loving each other, and marrying each other. You remember now, don’t you Jak? We fought as equals, we ended it as equals, and now we are meant to marry. And that’s good. That’s how it should be. Isn’t it, Jak.”
“Yes,” he gasped.
“That’s how it was, wasn’t it, Jak.”
“Yes,” he said, and groaned.
“That’s good, Jak,” I whispered, and I softly bounced my lightly clenched fist three times on the head of his hard penis. He thrust upward with his hips. I bounced the fist again, letting his penis penetrate just a little further into my smooth, oily grip. “That’s how it should be.” Bounce, a little deeper. “That’s how it was.” Bounce, half the length of his member sinking into my fist. “That’s how it should be.” Bounce, and he moaned. “That’s.” Bounce. “How.” Bounce. “It.” Bounce. “WAS!” I loosened my fist a little and slid it all the way down to the root of his penis. He groaned loudly with pleasure; I felt a slight spasm in his scrotum and was afraid that I had put him over the edge. I took my hands off him for a minute, to let him settle down. Then I asked,
“Do you want me, Jak?”
“Yes!” He let out another moan. “Yesss!”
I put my mouth against his year and whispered, “I want you, too. Right now. And I want you to love my body, as I am loving yours.” And I climbed up to straddle him on the table, bounced my nether lips on the head of his penis, up and down, as I had done with my fist, and then I plunged down on him, belly deep. He reached up for my breasts, whose nipples were already hard, pinching them lightly, then wiping up excess oil from his belly and smoothing it around the aureole. I gasped, and the muscles of my sheath clenched around him as I rocked over him. He moaned in response, his back arched as he thrust his hips up into me, I felt the muscles in his shoulders lock, and I said quickly, “Easy, Jak, draw back a little from the edge. Calm, just for now. Thaaat’s right. No matter how incredibly aroused you are, you will release only when I do, And when we release together, Jak, it will be the most intense pleasure of our lives, and afterward you will sink ten times as deep into this comforting trance, and you will remember exactly how we fought to a draw, all the details of the—oh. Oh. OH!”
The best memory of my life with Jak in Mar was that day—not just the shattering orgasm we shared, but the afterglow, when I slipped easily into his mind, savoring not only my own pleasure but also his, both the memory of his moment of ecstasy and his sleepy contentment afterward, so much in contrast to the angry guilt and shame that he had been carrying ever since the duel. There was more there, too, and it moved me: his real delight in being close to me, his developing vision of me as his comrade and friend, as well as his lover. Perhaps these joys blinded me to consequences that should have been predictable.