“So are you.” I unlaced his shirt and removed it deftly. “So are you, sweet Aleksei.” His pale skin gleamed in the sunlight, stretched taut over his angular bones. I trailed my fingertips over the jutting ridges of his collarbones, over his hard chest and his lean belly. I slid one finger along the waist of his breeches, glancing up at him. “May I?”

He swallowed. “Yes.”

Kneeling, I unlaced his breeches and eased them down over his narrow hips. His erect phallus sprang free, straining so hard it looked as though it must hurt. I blew softly on it, and Aleksei groaned at the touch of my warm breath.

“Don’t….. don’t…..” He breathed raggedly.

“Do you think it unclean?” I stroked his phallus lightly, feeling the silken skin sliding over the rigid core, and swirled my tongue gently around the swollen head. “It is the staff of life, Aleksei.”

“No, I know.” He took a step backward, stumbling in the breeches I hadn’t finished removing, and sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “It’s just too much! Just the sight of you doing it. I don’t want to—”

“Ah.” I hid a smile. It had been a long time since I’d been with a man as young and inexperienced as Aleksei, fearful of spilling his seed too soon. “Don’t worry, sweet boy,” I said, pulling off his breeches. “We have all the time in the world.”

He didn’t protest when I took him into my mouth, only made a strangled sound deep in his throat and clutched my head. I performed the languisement as an act of worship—albeit a brief one, to be sure. Aleksei’s hips jerked forward as he poured his seed and years upon years’ worth of repressed desire into my mouth.

“God!” he said in a hoarse voice. “Oh, God!”

I sat back, smiling.

Aleksei eyed me, flushed for once with pleasure and not shame. “You are a witch,” he murmured, reaching down to take my hands. “Come here.”

I let him tug me onto the bed beside him, where he kissed me without reservation, his tongue exploring my mouth, his hands exploring my body. He was Naamah’s child, and he had found his element. He kissed my throat, hands cupping my breasts, then gave me an inquiring look.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Oh, yes.”

His tawny head moved lower, his mouth closing over one nipple, suckling hard. Stone and sea, I had been too long deprived! I shivered with pleasure and ran my fingers through his hair, encouraging him.

“You like that.” Aleksei lifted his head, eyes bright.

“Oh, yes,” I said languidly.

“What else?”

I took his hand, guiding it between my thighs. “Touch me. Stroke me.”

He did, propping himself on one elbow, gazing at the cleft of my nether-lips with intense interest. “So soft! And so hot and so wet. I didn’t know.”

“It means you’re arousing me,” I murmured.

With one fingertip, he circled Naamah’s Pearl, caressing my tender, sensitive bud. “And this?”

I jerked involuntarily. “Is the seat of a woman’s pleasure, my hero,” I said breathlessly. “Your instincts are true.”

Aleksei smiled. “Shall I kiss you there?”

“If you wish.” I hoped he did.

“I think I do.” Kneeling between my thighs, he studied me, looking like a scholarly angel. “Even here, you are beautiful, Moirin.” Lowering his head, he kissed me—kissed and licked me with ardent desire. And although there was neither art nor skill in it, there was passion, and Naamah’s blessing hovering over us.

I climaxed beneath his mouth, moaning shamelessly and clutching his broad shoulders.

“I pleased you?” Aleksei looked startled and glad.

I laughed softly. “Yes, my hero. Would you like to please us both further?” I pulled him down atop me, reveling in the weight of him, reveling in the warmth of his skin against mine, wrapping my legs around him. “Come here.”

Aleksei was fully hard and erect again, the blunt head of his phallus nudging at my nether-lips in a tantalizing manner. His blue, blue eyes gazed earnestly into mine. “I won’t hurt you?”

“No.” I shook my head. “You would need to have greater care with a virgin,” I added. “But you will not hurt me.”

He nodded as though I’d given him a gift.

I reached between us, grasping his phallus and shifting my hips. The swollen head slid into me.

Aleksei caught his breath, thrusting; and the whole thick length of him filled me. His blue eyes widened. “It’s so…..”

“I know.” I kissed him, hard and deep, Naamah’s blessing like honey on my tongue. “I know, sweet boy. I know.”

FORTY-TWO

I liked the aftermath almost better than the love-making.

For the first time since I had known him, Aleksei was content in his own skin, calm and happy.

Fading sunlight filled the room. The candle I had lit burned low on the windowsill.

Naamah’s blessing lay over us like a blanket.

“You are so very well made, Moirin,” Aleksei murmured, stroking the curve of my hip. “As though your disparate gods conspired to combine all the best aspects of their folk in you. Tell me, how did you know the right words to say to me?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t.”

“You did, though.”

“No,” I said. “Naamah put them in my mouth.” I hesitated. “What did they mean to you?”

Aleksei touched my face. “I cannot explain it, not entirely. But she told me to trust my heart. And I realized that it does not matter that you cannot love me as I wish. It matters that I love you.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my eyes stinging.

He wrapped his strong, young arms around me. “Don’t be. I’m not.”

I laid my head on his chest. “I’m glad.”

“I think this is what it must have been like for Edom and Yeva in the Garden before the fall,” Aleksei mused. “To take pleasure in the light of day without fear of sinning, to be naked and unashamed. I think this is what I was meant to understand, Moirin. That state of grace is not lost to us after all; it is only that we have lost our way. Perhaps that is why God granted a measure of license to his errant grandson Elua and his disobedient servants. Perhaps their message is one we need to hear.”

“Gods have mercy, I’ve made a heretic of you,” I murmured.

He laughed, his breath stirring my hair. “Maybe. But I think rather that you’ve led me to the beginning of a deeper understanding of my faith.”

I lifted my head. “No more mortification of the flesh?”

“No more,” Aleksei promised. “At least not the kind meant to punish for desires that are natural and beautiful in their own right. I still believe there is merit in discipline such as fasting. As you said, this is a gift, and like any gift, it can be used for good or evil. I needed to hear that, too. Needed to hear it acknowledged.”

I smiled at him. “I suspect you’ll use it for good, sweet boy. You’re too gentle a soul to do otherwise.”

“I hope so,” he said earnestly. “But my father used it carelessly, and ruined my mother’s life because of it….. Oh!” His expression changed, half-stricken and half-hopeful. “Moirin. What if I’ve gotten you with child?”

“You haven’t,” I said gently. “It’s a gift Eisheth granted to the women of Terre d’Ange, and I’m D’Angeline enough to have inherited it. I’ll not be fertile until I pray to her to open the gates of my womb.”

Aleksei’s face fell. “Oh.”

I sat upright, taking his hand and stroking it. “You’ll find her someday, Aleksei. A helpmate to share your vision and your dream, who will love you and only you with all her heart.”

“I do love you, though,” he said. “And I suspect there is a part of me that always will. I cannot imagine I won’t.”

“Probably,” I agreed, thinking of my own lost loves. “But I think you will be surprised to find how much room there is for love in your heart.”

He reached up to touch my hair, running strands of it through his fingers. “Like you? Have you made a little space in your heart for me, Moirin, that my memory might exist alongside that of the princes and queens and peasant-boys you’ve loved?”

“Aye, a little.” I smiled at him again. “I will always be grateful for the gift you’ve given me today.”

“Me?” Aleksei looked startled.

“Yes, sweet boy.” I leaned down to kiss him. “You.”

“How so?”

Stone and sea, no one in the world could look as bemused and earnest as Aleksei! I drew idle circles on the bare skin of his chest, gazing at him and wondering what manner of man he would become. A strong one, I thought; a good one. Right now, he was like a half-grown lion, only just beginning to come into his strength.

One day…..

One day he might become a priest such as the Rebbe Avraham ben David, swaying the course of Vralian history with his eloquent passion and his faith, swaying it away from judgment and punishment, toward love and compassion and joy. Always, always seeking a deeper understanding of what the gods want of us.

Always seeking to divine the unknown word that Yeshua had written in the dust, that Yeshua had written in my vision.

Always deciding it must be love—over and over again.

I shivered.

“Moirin?”

I hadn’t answered Aleksei’s question. I came back to myself, smiling into his blue, blue eyes. “You gave me your trust,” I said. “And that is the greatest gift anyone can give. You allowed me to invoke Naamah’s blessing on your behalf, and you accepted it with grace and gladness, and an open, willing heart. And for the first time, I do believe there was a purpose in my presence here.”

He smiled back at me. “Oh?”

I kissed him again. “Aye.”

When the low afternoon light began to dim toward dusk, we donned our clothes and left our bedchamber for the common room, entering it hand-in-hand. It seemed to me as though Naamah’s blessing had graced the entire establishment.

Polina shook her head at us knowingly, disapproval giving way to pure indulgence. Her husband, Rodya, grinned and winked, setting deep bowls of cabbage stew simmered with seasoned balls of ground spiced meat before us.

The other four patrons of the inn watched us with envy and yearning.

“I feel so strange, Moirin,” Aleksei murmured. “I feel as though I want to embrace them all, share this moment with them. Is that not strange?”

“Not to me, no,” I said. “You know my father is a Priest of Naamah?” He nodded. “I think he sees the world this way all the time. I used to walk with him through the City. It made people glad just to see him. And when he smiled at them, they became beautiful.”

He gazed around the room. “They’re all beautiful, aren’t they?”

I nodded. “Yes, they are.”

“How do you stand it?”

“Oh…..” I shrugged. “You just love them, I suppose. After all, you can’t take the whole world to your bed.”

Aleksei glanced at me. “You would if you could.”

I laughed.

He laughed, too.

“Sweet boy,” I said fondly. “I do believe you have begun to understand me.”

Aleksei spooned stew into his mouth, eating with a good appetite. “Do you suppose other women have the same capacity for pleasure?” he asked, only flushing a very little bit at the question. “Non-D’Angeline women, I mean.”

“Oh, yes,” I said without thinking. “Of course.”

“Well, but you can’t know for sure unless…..” His voice trailed off, his flush deepening. “Oh.”

I laughed again at his expression. “It’s not the same as possessing Naamah’s gift, no. Of understanding pleasure as a birthright, of reaching for it as simply and naturally as breathing, of swimming in it like a salmon in a stream. But it’s there, it’s always there. It may need to be coaxed a bit, that’s all.”

He took another bite. “You’ll note I’m not asking who you may have been coaxing.”

I smiled sweetly at him. “Which is to the good, since it was a piece of Naamah’s business that does not concern you.”

Aleksei shook his head. “That’s an aspect of D’Angeline culture I cannot embrace. It is unnatural, and a point on which the scriptures are very clear.”

“Oh, aye.” I dipped a piece of brown bread into my stew. “I recall. A man shall not lie with another man as with a woman, or he shall be put to death. I expect that was written by a man who was used badly in his youth. But that is why there must always be consent on both sides of a union. You understand that is a sacred tenet in Terre d’Ange?”

“Yes, but—”

“But what?” I ate my bread. “No doubt sodomy is a vile and painful experience if it is forced. That does not make the act sinful in and of itself, nor does it mean it cannot be pleasant if done willingly and properly….. Aleksei, your mouth is agape.”

“Are you trying to find some further means of shocking me, Moirin?” he asked uncertainly.

“No.”

He exhaled hard. “Every time I think I’ve begun to understand, there seems some further goal on the horizon. And I will say again, this is one I will not pursue. Not with a woman, and most assuredly not with a man.”

“It’s not a requirement, sweet boy.” I toyed with my spoon. “There are D’Angelines who find pleasure in acts even I would shun; and there are D’Angelines who find the deepest abiding joy in remaining faithful to their chosen loves. So long as Blessed Elua’s precept is obeyed and the sacred tenet of consensuality is honored, Naamah’s blessing is on all of them.” I took a bite of stew, and swallowed. “I would have you be mindful of it as you seek to bring new understanding to your faith, that’s all.”