Rapture - Jacquelyn Frank Shadowdwellers

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“You said I’m a handmaiden! Handmaidens are supposed to have sex with the priests.” She made a snarling sound, like a furious animal. “Oh, I get it. You’re making nice to me so when you’re in the mood later I won’t say no! Well, forget it! No, in advance! Prick bastard!”

      She shoved away from her corner and stormed out of his room, but he quickly caught up with her in the bath and snagged her arm. He had to react swiftly, though, when she whipped around to hit him. He caught her hand tightly before it struck his face, and then he jerked her up tight to his body and went face-to-face with her as he tried not to feel the sickness racing through his guts in the form of dread.

      This is where it had all gone wrong before.

      “No. No!” he said through his teeth, giving her a hard shake to get her attention. “First of all, no one here has to have sex with anyone. I could be your priest for five hundred years and you could say no to me every minute of every day of those years and I would have to abide by that. Do you understand?”

      She made a huff of disbelief. Then she quietly studied him, those sly, sultry dark eyes of hers narrowing on him as she tried to pick out lies and deceit in him.

      “But that would mean you couldn’t have sex for five hundred years. I’m the only one you’d be allowed to screw around with, and if I say no, then you get nothing. For five hundred years?” She snuffled out that adorably sarcastic laugh of hers, and he would have smiled if he weren’t dreading every inch of this conversation.

      “That’s right,” he agreed tightly.

      “That’s bullshit.”

      “That’s faith and religious law,” he countered sharply. “I do not pay lip service to my faith alone. I am, you will find, an extremely devout man. I did not become leader of this religious house because I liked to fudge the rules. I am here because I do not tolerate insubordination and sin from my followers. I can only tolerate it from those who have not taken religious orders. I will forgive—I am always open to those who genuinely repent for their sins—but I will not forgive easily and forgiveness is not achieved easily. People here work very hard for the pleasure of Darkness and the respect of Light. Those who don’t or who seek short cuts around the rules pay a mighty price for inciting my disapproval.”

      The resonance of his voice was terrible, he knew. The power of his tone was one of his greatest tools, sometimes a stunning weapon. He could tell it was working as she stared at him with open surprise and wonder. And now, for the kicker.

      “Now realize this, K’yindara, because it is so dire that you understand me. Are you listening?” He only continued when he saw her nod. “Good, because I want you to seriously think about what it means should that scenario happen in reverse. Five hundred years, K’yindara, with no sexual congress of any kind with any other man if I tell you I don’t wish to be with you. That means no sexual intercourse with anyone other than yourself for the rest of your natural life, because it is as much my right to say no for whatever reasons as it is yours.”

      “Men don’t ever not want sex,” she observed meanly.

      He should have waited, he thought with hollow realization. This was better done after some familiarity had grown between them. Some faith and some trust. However, it was becoming clear to him that his private life was already food for gossip in his own house. What he had once thought was between himself and a woman he had trusted for two centuries, was now spread as far and wide as it wanted to be…and probably inaccurately and for all the wrong reasons. This undermining of his strength and his position, he realized now, was the reason why there were traitors in Sanctuary.

      “K’yindara, listen to me,” he said with a soft sort of warning he knew she would understand the seriousness of. He swallowed back all the residual dread and interfering flotsam of his mind. “I never had sexual relations with my previous handmaiden. There was never anything between us except for…the warmth and affection of a brother and his sister.” He all but choked on the description he had stupidly and blindly believed until six weeks ago.

      Gods, he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to have another handmaiden. Not yet. He was too damn raw still. It was unfair to her and doubly so to himself.

      But Drenna would not be denied. His goddess had plagued him relentlessly with visions of his new religious wife, driving him to distraction and making it impossible for him to do what it was that needed to be done to ferret out the corruption in Sanctuary. When Darkness had begun to show him dire danger and death cut across the face of his young maiden, he’d had no choice but to begin wooing her. He had stepped into Dreamscape, found her, and invited her to be his. K’yindara wouldn’t remember it, but she had agreed wholly and with an almost fierce enthusiasm.

      “Wait. She didn’t let you touch her for two centuries, and you were okay with that?” Again, he saw her cynical disbelief. But even though she wasn’t the one with the power of truth, he was going to make a believer out of her.

      “I would have been,” he said, meeting her eyes without so much as blinking, “but it wasn’t she who denied me, rather than it was me denying her.”

      This was the second time he had made her gape-mouthed speechless, and he had expected something like this. He had been less than precise with Karri when he had explained his reasons for his self-denial, feeling it was a private issue and choice, the one thing he shouldn’t be required to share with anyone but himself and his goddess. It had led to disaster. This time, he was going to make it very clear so there were no surprises.

      “Do not mistake me, K’yindara. I am a man with all the emotions and drives you might accuse me of, but I am also a being of higher reasoning and control. Lovemaking and sexual pleasures are quite beautiful and have a rich place in our lifestyles. There is no reason to shame such relations, or to fear them, when the right respect and admiration is involved. You would have learned all this had you been schooled. You would still be in school learning, come to think of it, at your tender age.

      “But a long time ago, I made a personal choice not to bring the complications and extreme emotions of sexual relations into my relationship with my handmaiden. It was my belief that we are here to serve others more than ourselves. After hearing so many maidens and priests confessing to me in private of the troubles in their relationships with their religious partners, I had to ask myself how they managed to function clearly and selflessly through the night when they were obsessing over their home life. We are supposed to be different. Not a lot, but just enough above our followers to keep things clear in our minds and to focus on how to show them the best way through their lives. We are religious guides and mentors and fulfill dozens of crucial roles in this society. We haven’t the luxury of splitting focus or energy into selfish pleasures like sex.

      “If it truly could be just about the physical release, then it might have a place, but it is impossible for two people to share such intimacy and then deny all the understandable emotion that comes with it. It is simply better, to my mind, to never cross the line in the first place. This way, no one has expectations, disappointments, or is hurt in any way, and focus can remain where it should be; on the well-being of Sanctuary and those who come here and need us.”

      “And what about the natural needs of the body?” she asked him, her eyes narrowed in utter fascination.

      “Masturbation,” he replied frankly. “A fair enough substitute.”

      She nodded slowly, but he knew it wasn’t an agreement so much as it was her way of absorbing the information. “I see,” she said quietly. She stepped back, her mind obviously churning as she looked him over slowly. Actually, there was something discomforting in the way she assessed him. Magnus didn’t know why exactly, but it was as though she were pulling him apart by pieces with just the power of her mind. Then she came forward again, reaching out her hand, but hesitating with her fingertips only an inch from touching his stomach.

      “May I touch you?” she asked, cocking up a thinly arched brow, a small smile teasing the corner of her mouth.

      Magnus was shocked by the rigid scream of denial that locked through his entire body just then. It was so powerful it all

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