“Devil’s Revenge”, Chapter 2… Again with the WARNING: Sexual Content.

We are going backwards here. Chapter 1 is a mess, and needs to be rewritten. So, I am posting this chapter because it gives a hint of what this book is about. And about that, well, it’s really two books and I have to find a way to slice it in half.

Basically the story line is a time warp: from the 21st century to the 1820’s. Bess is a novelist, writing a book set in the 1820’s, but has grown disaffected with her characters and plot and has closed the book for sixteen years. This hasn’t sat well with some of the characters, mostly two men, Garrett Cortelyou and Obadiah Voorhees, and they have re-manifested as demons or devils. They are in mortal combat, as they were in the original book, but this time they have all the denizens of Hell to help them. Battle lines are drawn up, and Bess, a very 21st century woman who does not believe in Heaven or Hell, finds herself in the middle of this conflict. Garrett Cortelyou, the devil below, is a Dutch devil and has the seduction manners of a goat. He’s able to kidnap Bess from her own bed and century and by rearranging her atoms, or something like that….transfer her back to his century and house. He also can read her mind which means he has the advantage over her almost all the time.

Lady Nyo

Devil’s Revenge ,Chapter 2

“What the hell?”

Opening my eyes, I struggled to focus. Embers had popped from the fireplace in front of me and it sounded like the Fourth of July! One rolled to where I was sitting and stopped at my bare foot. Blinking, I snatched my foot back and took a deep breath. If materializing this way was supposed to unsettle me, it was working. My hands shook, my heart raced, and I felt nauseated. A few minutes passed before I had control of myself. At a man’s command I appeared in this room. I shivered, wondering what would happen now.

The wind raced around the corners of the house, and sleet scratched at the window panes in a steady rhythm. I was glad for the good fire before me. I was chilly dressed in a linen morning gown, nothing more than a wrapper over a chemise. I had that mob cap on my head, falling over my eyes, but at least I was without stays. I could breathe again.

Placed on the tea table were two sheets of stiff paper and a lead pencil. I stared into the flames leaping about the logs, lost in thought, the sway of the fire hypnotic.

Was he a demon? Well, he wasn’t the Devil, or at least he didn’t seem to be. No horns or hooves or pitchfork. I had no idea what he was, and my knowledge of anything supernatural was poor or non existent. But he shouldn’t exist, not if I was sane and the universe too, but here he was. What was he? My imagination couldn’t stretch that far to account for all these magical things, like the tankards of ale appearing with a snap of his fingers, or that he had materialized out of the pages of an unfinished book. But perhaps these things were small beer compared to what was possible? In any case, I was caught between two worlds, my comfortable if mundane life with a husband and this apparent ‘rip in the fabric of the universe.’

Since I had a bit of a chapter to finish, I started to write a couple of lines. I might as well use the time I was given, and writing would calm my nerves. The chapter’s weather on my page imitated the weather outside my window, both gray and threatening days. I would write in a snowstorm, the two characters not able to travel, stuck in the countryside. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a small movement and glancing up, there sat the demon, Garrett Cortelyou. I jumped and squeaked out a scream, covering my mouth with my hands.

“Goedemorgen to you, and I am still the Devil, I see.” He sat across the table, unshaven this morning. His appearing like that and his confounded ability to read thoughts still rattled me.

“I am thinking of growing a beard, just to bedevil you.” He grinned, sitting back in his seat, stretching his legs and propping one boot upon the other.

“Why would I care if you had a beard?” I asked, stumbling over my words.

“It would give a turn to seducing you, something new and untried.” He grinned even broader and winked at me. “Ah, think how good it will feel with my beard brushing the soft skin in the middle of your back. I can think of other places to bury it just as fine.”

“Ah, stop it, Demon child. What business brings you here this morning except to taunt me.”

“You should form that as a question, not a statement. Again, with the bad English.”

“It is not a question of whether you will taunt me, but a fact. I already felt your sting.”

Stretching his arm out, he lay it palm up on the table, his hand out for mine. A gentle gesture. I had no reason to trust him.

“Yes, a gentle gesture, and one that I would like to follow up with more ‘stinging’ of your nether parts, my sweeting.” His eyes were languid and narrowed, and left no question his thoughts were mostly about lust this morning.

I reddened at his silly words, in spite of my determination not to blush.

“Oh, I don’t think that you are at all displeased, sweetheart. I think you are attempting to play a game where your feet do not touch bottom.”

I listened and thought a moment. “Tell me, then, how does this work? Does anybody in my life notice I’m gone? I don’t remember much when I’m home, and it seems the time with you is all a dream. What happens here? How do you do these things?” I looked around the room, wondering if I came down the chimney.

Garrett smiled. “Time is different in each dimension. A month here is an hour there.”

“Then my husband doesn’t know I’m gone?”

He snorted, a strange sort of laugh. “I think you could be gone a week in your time, darling, and that husband of yours wouldn’t notice.”

I didn’t want to humor him, and suppressed my own laughter. He was probably right. My husband was addicted to television and we led almost separate lives in our marriage. Little held us together, except our dogs and cats, and a comfortable routine.

“How do you bring me here?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“For Christ’s sake! You kidnap me from my bed and bring me to yours. There are laws against such behavior.”

He started to laugh. “If I told you, it would ruin all the fun.”

“For you? I have a marriage to hold together and you are interfering in my life.”

He looked at me, and his smile disappeared. “You are quite the little hypocrite. You put a set of horns on your husband’s head fast enough and now you complain? I seem to remember you enjoying the fucking you got. Perhaps I should give some lessons to your husband.”

“You are a bastard! He’s a fine and sweet man!” I rose from my seat in my anger.
He did not seem impressed. He barely changed his posture, only crossed his arms over his chest. If he thought I would hit him, he didn’t care.

“Yet here you are with me. And curious as to what comes next. That depends on controlling your temper. You act like a spoilt child.”

Suddenly I felt drained. This show of anger was not getting me far. He was stubborn, with his own set of rules. He was right, I had set the horns upon my own husband’s head and enjoyed the fucking that set them there. Slowly I sat down in my chair, my energy gone. I didn’t have a moral leg to stand on.

“Woman.” I heard his voice through my silent tears. “I promise you your dear husband will not notice you gone. He will think you outside feeding your chickens or getting his ale from that cold cabinet.”

I started to laugh through my tears. He could be a fly on the wall or a ghost haunting my house!

“Sixteen years gives me the authority to do so,” he said, reading my thoughts.

Again he stretched out his hand to me across the table. It was a tender gesture, but I was having none of it. He sat back and looked at me solemnly.

“Take the mobcap off, please. It reminds me of Aunt Catherine in bed, and that’s a cock- crushing sight in the morning.”

I took the cap off because it was slipping over my eyes. Aunt Catherine was a character in her eighties, almost bald and toothless.

“What have you done to your hair?” He looked intently at my now caramel streaked locks.

“Oh, summer is rough, being out in the garden, and the southern sun, you know….” My words trailed off. What in hell was I doing here? Talking to a doppelganger like he was a friend. “I put in caramel streaks.”

“Why would you put candy in your hair?” Garrett‘s eyes narrowed in concentration. “Does it taste sweet?”

“Oh Lord, deliver me from such fools! No, Garrett, it is just a color that women put– Oh, never mind.”

“Hey day! What’s this?” He spied my foot with the cherry red nail polish peeking from my under my gown. He reached down and grabbed my foot, almost yanking me off my seat.

“Garrett! Remember I’m attached to that foot!” He had it in his lap, where he was staring at the red toes.

“It’s like cherries in milk, your foot!” Looking up at me, he laughed. “From your hair to your feet, I could eat you this morning.” He looked like he was capable of such and I snatched my foot back fast from his lap.

“You are here for a reason, now state it and leave.” I felt foolish sitting in my bathrobe talking to something not real.

“Ah, my pretty author, do I need a reason to visit you in my house? Remember that you are here at my calling. Let’s start with a name. What am I to call you?”

Oh God…I had not thought of this! After all these years, one would think he would know by now. I had three Christian names and tried not to think of them. I couldn’t fool the damn devil.

“Well, Sarah is taken now. And a bit morbid for me to call you that. Remember? Sarah is killed by your friend Obadiah. I’ll call you Bess from your middle name. I like the sound of that. Nice and docile.” He threw back his head and laughed.

I well remember what I write, you stupid devil. Why was he here this morning? Or more to the point, what in hell was I doing here in this bedroom?

“I came to apologize,” he said, offhandedly. “ I was a bit rough on you, not that you didn’t deserve it. I could have been a lot rougher, but then, you wouldn’t have been so nice to me.” He grinned, the loathsome demon.

“Ah, still with the names….and you were nice to me. Even if you resisted at first.”

“Garrett, that was almost a rape. You made me bleed.” I wondered if he could feel remorse. I didn’t know how much was human, how much devil.

“Your own fault, Bess. You refused to kiss me. Next time allow me your mouth, it will go better for you.” He paused, thinking. “I don’t know how you could call that a rape, sweetheart. You fell in my arms fast enough.”

My mouth was open with shock. What an arrogant man…demon! But he was right. I had tried hard not to respond to his ardor, but my body was not of the same resolve. Blushing, I tried not to remember his lovemaking.

My stomach was rumbling, and snapping his fingers, a tray of tea appeared on the table between us.

“Would you like a cup?” I was trying to focus on something else, yet my hands shook.
.
“Yes, make it sweet, my love.” He turned his chair to face me. Looking over his cup, he caught my eyes. He was such a silly demon and appeared right at home in this bedroom.

“Before, it was ‘demon lover’. I liked that best. Could you please say it again?”

I smiled, touched at his vanity. ‘Yes, demon lover, and all attendant titles that go with it.” Oh God! What am I saying? Where is my sense?

“Ah, that is better. Tell me, my Bess, what happens at the end of the book?”

“You mean you don’t know?” I was surprised, I thought he would. I hadn’t written it down, but knew the outcome for a number of years. I thought he was a mind reader.

“No, I don’t know. I have tried to read your confounded writing, but until you typeset it up into a book, I can’t. Tell me- do I survive Obadiah? Do I get the girl? What is my fate?”

“Do I look like a gypsy woman? Why should I tell you anything? I think that is the only power I have here.” I sat back and looked at him smugly. Two could play at his game.

“Oh, my darling woman, you have more power over me and John Thomas down here than you know. And speaking of cocks, who are these other men in your life? Does your husband know of the horns you are planning to put on his head?” He looked at me, his dark eyes flashing. I wondered suddenly if he ever had a soul.

“How would you know anything like that?” I rose from my seat, again, angry and stupid. Before I could formulate an answer, he rose from his chair and yanked me to him, hurting my wrist.

“You are full of fun, with no idea of consequences,” he said almost hissing with anger, pulling me close to him. “I would call you a cocktease, but you know what you are. You think your glib tongue will hold you from harm? It will lay you down for it. You are such a little fool.”

“You are hurting my wrist. Stop it!” My words were sharp and he dropped my arm. I stood there rubbing where his fingers now marked my skin.

He was angry about something. I could see that. Shocked by the violence of his words and hurting my wrist, I was growing afraid and tried to placate him with sweet words.

“Garrett….I created you from the desire of my loins. No mortal can compete with you. You are a subject of jealously among men, my demon friend”.

“Ah, not demon lover?” He was not so easily put off. He was in a fine temper.

“Garrett, as a character, created by me, you are perfection. There is nothing lacking in you. I have seen to that. No human can hold a candle to you.” I wondered why I would say such a thing! Fear had to be the larger part of my thinking. He had the strength and violence of manhood, compounded by magic. I needed to be more cautious. He had the power of a demon, after all.

“Your words are not so original, but will do for now.”

He made a mocking bow, ending the argument. Placing his hands on his hips, he looked at me with a bemused expression on his face.

“I want some changes here. I am being starved by you, and your thoughtless writing.”

“What do you mean, sweet Demon?” I hoped my voice dripped with acid.

“Ah, nice and docile, Bess! I like that. Do it more.” He laughed but it wasn’t a cheerful sound.

“For a week I have fed on bread, cheese, and ale. Jennie doesn’t cook for me, nor does Daniel. I am hungry and that doesn’t make my temper better. I want some real food written into this damn novel. I want some Zuur Tong, Head Cheese, some Gehakt, a nice Hutspot a couple of times a week. I want you to bake me some kretenbroad.”

“All right, Garrett…translate those words.” Zuur Tong turned out to be Spiced Tongue, Gehakt was sausage, Hutspot was a one-dish meal of beef, mashed potatoes, onions and carrots and Kretenbroad was currant bread.

I couldn’t resist. “Why don’t you snap your fingers for the food to appear?” I smiled sourly.

He grimaced and scowled at me. “I can’t seem to manage more than a tankard of ale, some spirits and a tray of tea. I can levitate a chamber pot, but you don’t want to see that trick.”

I laughed and told him that I would make Daniel, the caretaker, bring in his niece, Anna, to cook, in the book.

“Good. Settled. Now come here, lambkin. He led me to the window that looked down to the river. Placing me in front of him, he put his arm around my shoulder, holding me.

“I don’t like sitting in that library all day, I want you to write me out there hunting. I want to bag more ducks. There are geese on the river bank for the taking, can you see them from here?” He stretched a long arm towards the general direction of the river, but I saw nothing in the gray, morning light
.
“Maybe a deer or two. I need some time with my guns, and I want to get a pack of dogs. Agreed? And about your Dutch.”

He was full of demands today. I had to smile. “What about my Dutch?”

“It is rotten. You write what you don’t know. Again. You should ask me. Like the word ‘fokken’….It doesn’t mean to ‘plow’…it means to copulate. Simple, isn’t it? Now, let us get fokken.” He tried to steer me towards the bed, but I twisted out of his reach.

“Stop, Garrett. You have the seduction manners of a goat.” He stopped in surprise in the middle of the room.

“I am unworthy of your cherry, plucked though it’s been. Forgive my manners, my lady.” He gave a low and elegant bow, and coming up, picked me up over his shoulder. He threw me hard on the bed and jumped on top of me.

“I can’t breathe, you monster! Get off me, give me some air!”

“I might, if you willingly give me your mouth this time.”

“And what do you intend to stuff in it? I know you, Garrett. I may have been oblique about your ‘lesson plan’ in the novel, but I think I know something of your appetites.”

He rolled off of me, laughing. Turning back, he propped himself on an elbow, stroking the hair from my face.

“You and I, we understand each other, no? Perhaps I don’t have to read every thought of yours. But it is fun, and it gives me an advantage.”

“It’s an unfair advantage, Garrett–and you know it. I have little independence when you do so.”

“Ah, but that is some of the delights of being a woman. You submit to me, in all things, and I will fill your–mouth with sweet things. I will stroke your limbs and warm your belly, and you will open to me with pleasure.”

“Now who sounds like a second-rate novel?”

“And what kind of novel are you writing? Do you even know?”

“I don’t, just something decent. Men are critical- and my girlfriends are even more so.”

“What do the men think?” He asked, distracting himself with his hands on my breasts.

“I thought that you would know this? Don’t you read my emails?”

“No, I don’t. Not yet. Isn’t there a password involved?”

“Why would a demon need a password? Aren’t you all seeing?”

“I’m trying, my sweet woman, to seduce you. I don’t give a damn about your letters. I want to know the competition. I want to know about these men who stick their tongues down your throat and part your pretty thighs. Why are you talking to them about the novel? Why mention us?

“I didn’t know that there was ‘an us,’ Garrett. You forget you are all fantasy. All in my mind.” I snapped my fingers; he was still there.

“I think that I am all between your legs right now.” He put his hand over my crotch, and stroked me through my gown.

“You want to kiss me, why don’t you start with my mouth?”

“You can delay all you want, you sweet witch. I have eternity here.”

“Then this is Hell? Purgatory? Something like Dante’s Inferno?

Putting his head next to my neck, he breathed gently on my skin. The warmth of his breath was arousing.

“Would you stop trying to figure it out and just let it be? Look, I will lie quietly with you, and we can coo together. I promise you will rise as virginal as you are now. Just go cook me something in the kitchen. I am fading fast.”

I promised to feed him but he didn’t keep his. The afternoon was a quiet one, as he slept on my breast. I had a chance to observe my demon lover closely, and he was as beautiful in life as anything I could put on the page. He would be happy with that, but of course, he already knows what I think.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2007-2013

“Devil’s Revenge”, Chapter 5, WARNING: Sexual Content, you have been warned.

This chapter comes from a book I started at the end of 2006. The characters came from my first novel (unpublished…way too long) and finishing that novel (“Heart of the Maze”) I didn’t want to end these characters. I had grown attached and this was damn stupid. So I came up with another book, first called “Another Story” then “Devil’s Revenge”. It’s a tale of magic, demons, cosmic travel and nothing like that ponderous first book. I learned a lot from writing this book, but again, too long by far. It was the first time I used time-warping in a story. And magic.

Garrett Cortelyou is a demon, well, half human and half demon. There is a whole parade of demons in this book and it took me out of my usual comfort zone in the research. Bess is a writer, who finds herself plucked out of the 21st century to 1832. Garrett can be a chauvinist and a brute, but he has a lot of energy….

Why do we write such things, and why do we create such characters? Every writer has an answer for this…I’m still trying to figure out mine.

Lady Nyo

–
“DEVIL’S REVENGE”
Chapter 5

I had no way of telling time or sequence or anything that relates to the passage of time. I think of my society, where we grew up around various clocks: mantel clocks, hall clocks, electric clocks in the kitchen, the battery run clocks by our bedsides, and our wristwatches. In the dimension I was visiting, or found myself, there were few clocks. No one so far wore watches. Perhaps there were pocket watches, but I saw few people and couldn’t tell.

So I didn’t know what time it was of the morning, though I saw the sun had not risen. The room was colored by the timid light creeping into dawn, a blending of gray shadows. The fire had burned low during the night, and cast no glare. There before the fireplace was the Demon. He slouched in his chair, one booted foot upon the other, staring into the embers. He smoked a white, clay pipe, something I recognized as a “Dutch pipe.” He didn’t stir from his chair as I called his name, but blowing out a mouthful of smoke, he turned his face towards the bed.

“You’re finally awake.” He grinned around the stem of his pipe, his large white teeth gleaming in the dim light of the room.

“It is too early to wake, Garrett. Aren’t you cold at the fire?” I snuggled back into my pillow.

“’Ah, an invitation to your bed this early? Would do, but there is a litter of puppies around your breast.”

I opened the covers, and there under the blankets, were his four pups. Little two month old water spaniels, three boys and the girl, the runt, Sophie, snuggled between my breasts.

“Did you do this, Demon?” I laughed, for I had no memory of putting them there. The smell of puppies this close is a bit high, like sour milk.

“The fire was low when I entered the room and you looked warm enough to comfort them.”

“Have you thought what you are going to do with them, yet?”

“I aim to keep them right here, and you, my darling woman, will be nursing them for me.”

“Ah, Garrett, had you ever thought that perhaps I might be a bit too busy to care for your dogs? I am trying to finish this novel, my friend, and perhaps it would have been nicer for you to ask me first.”

“Perhaps, yes…but it still doesn’t change the outcome.” He grinned and his eyes snapped in the firelight. “The rules of the engagement are simple. You do what I want.”

“You are such an arrogant Demon! What makes you think that I will do as you demand? Have you ever heard of free will?”

“Highly overrated and doesn’t apply here.” He continued to puff and draw on his pipe and filled the room with his horrible smoke. Brimstone I believe.

“No so.” He continues to read my thoughts at will…his idea of free will, I suppose. He packed down his ‘tobacco’ with his thumb. “It’s a nice cherry and spice blend I brought from the islands… Perhaps you would prefer a pipe of opium?”

“I have never done such a thing, thank you very much.”

He turned a half-opened eye at me, and said lazily. “Perhaps before you dismiss it, you should at least try it once.”

“And why would I do such a thing? It seems a half-death to me.”

My Demon continued to puff on his pipe, the lazy whiffs of smoke spreading across the room. When I first smelled the acrid smoke, I had thought fleetingly of the pot that I used to smoke on occasion. I thought, ‘fleetingly’, but that was enough for my demon to pick up. Suddenly, the smoke was not of tobacco, but of a sweet smelling herb I recognized though I had not smelled for years.

“You bastard demon!” I laughed at him, this conjuring trick a minor one in his bag. “Do you know how hard it is to quit that stuff? That is the last thing I need to smell this morning. Way too early!”

All this ruckus awakened the dogs in my bed. They were rolling over each other, and jumping at the pink ribbons of my mobcap. Little Sophie between my breasts grunted and stretched.

“You have awoken your dogs, Garrett, now you better find something to feed them.”

He snapped his fingers and a bowl appeared on the floor in front of the fire. I handed each one from the bed to him, and he placed them around the bowl. Whatever it was, they ate with growls and snarls, stepping over each other.

“What is it you’re feeding them?” Even my runt Sophie was not shying from the food.

“Deer meat was handy.”

Well, at least he was sensible enough not to put down a dish of milk. Those pups would be runny within an hour.

“Oh, I thought about you nursing them but your nipples would give out in a day. Though it would be amusing to see your milk spout when they started to howl.”

Oh, he was a nasty demon this morning!

“Well, I’m glad you decided on deer meat instead.” What a devil he was, to think of these ways of tormenting me. His temper was like mercury, and he took offense easily. Perhaps it was part of the demon culture, for he certainly was a touchy devil.

“You should know, you thought me up.”

“Oh, Demon, I think you have had a long life before you ever came to thought.”

“It used to be Demon Lover, and now it is ‘friend’? I think we go backwards.”

Opening the covers, I smiled at him sweetly, and decided to take my chances this morning. He was an entertaining fellow, and carefully handled, could be amusing.

He put down his pipe on the table, and moved to the bed, slipping in bedside me. He placed my head upon his shoulder as he was wont to do, and settled next to me.

“You know, Garrett, I have a lot of writing to do today. I am behind with the book and want to finish before the years out.”

“You can write when I’m through with you, on the morrow…I want to show you things today. First I want to show John Thomas between us a seashell of delights.”

He was amorous in the morning. Actually, he was usually ready for a romp any time of the day or night.

“Besides, you avoided me in Chapter 4 and I mean to make up for that.” He had a scent about him that enchanting, a combination of musk and sweat and probably brimstone.

“It’s the scent of an aroused man, who is about to release a lot of little demons from his loins.” I laughed at his clumsy wit, and blushed in his arms. “You modern women wash too much. You have forgotten the scent of sex and its purpose. It draws the bees to the honey.”

Perfume and soap was such a part of my life that I didn’t realize my body produced its own scent of desire. Since he had bedded me my thinking on this had changed. After our lovemaking, we lay in a nest scented with the smell of flowers, old flowers, ashes and wood.
.

“Lie still, my darling woman, and indulge my mood here.”

When my demon demanded a thing, it was wise for me to listen. He had a way of bending me to his will, and I was learning, slowly, that sometimes there was an innate wisdom in what he did. Sometimes.

I lay in his arms. He touched my forehead, on both temples with one hand extended. He passed his hand slowly down to my eyes, and as he did, they closed. I barely felt his hand descend to my midriff, where he stopped and pressed down hard. That is where I seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep, or at least a trance. Then, with something like a slow electrical shock, from the ends of my fingers and toes, I felt a gathering of energy, something warm and concentrating, moving down the passageway of my limbs to the center of my body, where he had pressed on my stomach. It seemed that all my nerve endings were coming alive, and centering in my stomach. My pelvis was flooded with a warmth that moved back and forth across my hip bones. An exquisite feeling of tingling took hold of my face, my breast, my entire body. Suddenly, it all rushed upwards, out of my body, like a current of many colored ribbons, opening upward and outward, bursting from my body like waves of liquid and spinning off like a million stars above me. I was lifted from all gravity and hurled through space like a ragdoll. I was transformed into pure energy, or something of that nature, for I had no words to describe what was happening to me. All I knew that it was an extreme pleasure, beyond anything I could imagine, and something that I didn’t want to stop. It dissolved my body into a stream of light, flowing through and around any obstacle, any fear. I felt like I was turned inside out, and my sex had blossomed like a giant orchid. My whole body, or what was left of it, pulsated with a spent desire. Slowly, I seem to have fallen to earth, to this bedroom, to this bed, and in the arms of a man who was lying there unconscious. I looked at him, and he was naked next to me, the bedclothes on the floor. The room was over heated, though the fire was still low. I felt a wetness on my side, and looking down, saw that he was bleeding from his left side, below his heart.

“Garrett!”, I called to him in a panic. “Wake up!. Oh my God! You are bleeding, you have injured yourself.” I shook him, trying to arouse him.

He came slowly out of his trance, for it seemed that he was as spent as I was. “I am fine. It’s just a little sacrifice for this pleasure.” He passed his hand over his small wound, and it disappeared. My face was contorted with alarm, my hands on his shoulders.

“What did you do? What happened to us?”

He smiled a weak smile and cleared his throat. “There are many things in this world and out of it. That is just one. It’s pretty spectacular, but there are even better things to come.” He burped loudly. “Right now, I’m starving, and am weakened with expending that energy.” Turning over, he said with a grin. “Pretty good, no?”

I stared up at the ceiling, too weak to sit up. “Pretty good, yes.”

I lay there, silent, thinking of what had just happened. . My body felt like velvet, with no structure or nerves. I was empty of everything, completely undone.

“But why do you bleed?”

“Bess, you ask too many questions. Just think of Adam’s rib and the creation of Eve.”

He grinned at his words, and sat upright. Snapping his fingers, a tray of breakfast appeared on the table. He put on his long, linen shirt, and sat himself heavily in a chair.

I didn’t think that I could rise from the bed, much less walk to the other chair. My body was without bones.

“Oh, forgive me. I forget. That first experience usually knocks the wind out of your sails. You’ll find ways around that.”

He pushed himself out of his chair, and helped me to sit up on the side of the bed, and led me to the chair. I sat there, not dizzy, but confused as to what had happened to me. Was this what is called Tantric sex?

“Nope,” I heard him mumble as he stuffed his mouth with bread and butter. “Far beyond that earthy delight, but we can play with it next if you want. Bit of a bore, though.” He drank a swallow from his tankard of ale, as he preferred this drink instead of my tea in the morning.

I could not imagine doing anything else that day or the next! He grinned at me, the lustful devil, and pushed some bread my way. He extended his hand across the table and looked at me tenderly, and I placed my hand in his. There was a little of that current still present in the air, and it melted my hand into his.

Ah, Devil, I thought to myself. You are a dangerous man or demon, whatever you be. I wondered, when I fell back to earth, if all the atoms fell back in place. I knew I had given something to him, far beyond my heart and sex, and it seemed to involve my trust. Perhaps that was the key to his heart.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2008-2013