Worth The Wait: A Nature Of Desire Series Novel (23 page)

After the scene concluded, there were four minutes to go. Billie was doing the transition, and Des and Missive’s act would follow him.

Abruptly, Julie noticed she wasn’t alone. Some of the other performers were gathering in the shadows, staying out of the way but clearly wanting to get a good view of the upcoming act.

The minutes went by both fast and slow to her. Billie wrapped up his part and returned to her in the wings. He positioned himself right behind her, so she couldn’t see him, but she would have recognized him with her nose. He favored Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds perfume. When in drag, he always had a light mist of it clinging to him.

She turned to look at him. He now wore a bronze gown with an ebony wig that spilled silk to his waist and over his shoulders. He shifted to link his arm through Julie’s.

“What you’re about to see, honey-chile, is why we recommended putting him right before intermission,” he whispered as the lights went down again. “After his performance, the audience is going to need that wine bar in the lobby.”

Julie sighed. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to hang around to watch. I haven’t figured out how to deal with him doing this to another woman.”

“Just watch, baby girl.” Billie’s arm slipped around her, holding her close with a woman’s fragrance and a man’s strength. “You’ll feel better after.”

Or worse
, she thought dourly.

In the dark, she heard the hushed conversations and shifting of the audience. She closed her eyes, drinking in that energy. The trundling sound told her the curtain was opening, and the light behind her lids told her the scene had begun. She opened her eyes.

The music cued was a woodwinds piece called “Pan’s Melody.” As it filled the speakers and poured into the audience, Julie imagined the Fae lord winding through the forest he loved, as much a part of himself as breath, blood and bone.

Light spread over the scenery like a rising silvery moon. The audience inhaled in appreciation, creating a rippling wind sound, echoed by the performers closest to her. While Julie automatically shushed them, she was as engaged as they were.

Des had used light brown jute against a dark brown board suspended about seven feet above the stage. His rope was woven in the shape of a tree against the board, a complicated network of interlaced, spreading branches that twisted into a thick, knotted trunk. As the trunk cleared the board, the rope spread out into a nest of tangled roots, forming a cocoon for the bundle of precious life suspended in their cradle. The rope ends beneath the cocoon anchored it to the stage, more spreading roots.

Missive was in that cocoon, tied in a fetal position. Rope had been wrapped over her eyes, blinding her. Her hands were folded over her breasts, legs drawn up to her stomach. Since she was naked, light played over pale skin.

A cutout looked like the moon shining above. They’d talked about doing an ankle level fog, but Des had nixed that, not wanting anything to obscure his vision. Always taking care of his sub. It was a good aesthetic choice, though. The silvery light added the right touch of ambiance, nothing else needed.

Like Pan walking through the wood in truth, Des appeared out of the shadows of the opposite wing. He was shirtless and wore dark, close-fitting trousers and bare feet. The light played over his tattoos, darkening the sunburst on his back while etching out the dragon on his biceps.

He moved with grace and strength, with intense attention on what lay before him. Julie saw several people in the front rows inch forward in their seats, unconsciously drawn toward him, toward the unspoken messages of the scene, toward all of it. She was very conscious of Billie’s firm hold on her waist. She must have leaned forward, and he thought she was about to be drawn out to the stage, enchanted by Pan’s allure. She wanted to be amused, but she thought he might be right. She curled her hand around the edge of the podium.

Des circled the cocoon, suspended at eye level. He trailed his fingers along the curve of Missive’s shoulder, her flank, and curled his fingers over her ankle. He made a complete rotation around her, shadows dancing and drifting like they would if clouds were wafting over the moon. The effect was spectacular. She was so buying the light designer a keg of her favorite alcoholic beverage.

Des drew a dark rectangular object from his back pocket. A dramatic snap of his wrist revealed and released the blade of the knife, and he swept it across Missive’s body. In the same fluid movement, he threw the knife down so it plunged quivering in a rise in the earth, a firmly anchored piece of layered foam board. Des caught her curled body as it unraveled into his arms.

Billie had clutched her at the waist at the same moment Julie had increased her grip on him. Des swayed with the flute piece, turned, turned again, a slow pivot on the ball of one foot. He removed the smaller lengths of ropes from her eyes, around her wrists, casting them away. A new length of rope shook out from his hand on the turn, a silver metallic nylon that reflected the moonlight.

“Now from a static form to
ichinawa
,” Myers murmured. He’d drawn closer for a better view. Since he was her other rigger performer, Julie wasn’t surprised to see him. At her quizzical look, he explained in a whisper. “It means one rope. For Des, it’s kind of a foreplay before he moves into more demanding disciplines.”

Des had Missive on her feet but was holding her with one arm. He spun her away from him and the rope was looped on her wrist. He used that hold and his other hand to spin her back to him, the rope now wrapped around her body, holding her elbows to her sides. Then back out again. He turned and twisted with her, bringing one arm over her head and pulling it back so her hand brushed her shoulder blade, elbow pointed up.

Keeping their movements like two dancers, he turned her and brought her to her knees, her head and back in a convex shape, a position that showed her surrender and his strength. Then he had her down in a turtle-like pose, the rope coming through her legs as he tied it to both ankles and plucked on the line, obviously to stimulate her between the legs. He’d looped the rope over the back of her neck, so when she quivered and shuddered, it emphasized how she was unable to lift her head or move out of the compact position.

Des knelt over her, slid an arm under her waist and then flipped her, loosening the rope in several graceful movements and drawing them both back to their feet. Missive was a bending willow in the circle of his arms.

Another rope was lowered. Des picked her up, did that slow turning dance again to bring them to it. As he put her feet on the ground, he attached Missive’s bound wrists to the hook at the end of the rope.

“Now the
semenawa
,” Myers whispered to her. “Torture rope, mixed in with other styles. He’s like watching a sidewalk painter with no formal training, but endless raw talent. You never know what he’s going to do or combine, but it’s always a work of art.”

Strings had joined the woodwinds, interjecting a note of danger, like a flight through the woods. Des had Missive netted in a matter of breathless moments, taking her off her feet and then tying ankles to thighs, bending her body back in a far more extreme curve than he’d done with Julie. He’d turned Missive into a pale crescent, straining from all the emotions gripping her. The audience could hear her gasps, sounds that revealed both her excitement and the stress the torturous position was putting on her body. At this angle and this close, Julie could see her reaction glistening on her thighs, and Des rewarded it by bending and pressing his lips reverently over one damp streak.

The moon above was the same crescent, as if he’d put her in that position to honor its light. He tied Missive’s hands in a marionette’s supplicating pose, reaching up to the moon, but as he continued to craft and shape her, she became a fairy dancing in air, contorting in a way only a fairy could. Des drew a pair of wings from the side stage and added those to the knots of rope beneath her shoulder blades. The wings looked like a moth’s, a pale silver green color.

Once he had them on her, a discreet and deft movement of his hand made it appear as if flame had leapt from his palm, rather than the lighter he had concealed there. He set the tips on fire and backed up, sending her spinning so the flame fanned out, eating through the paper that formed the wings. A blink before the fire would have gotten too close, he whipped them off of her and doused it.

Some of those in the audience began to applaud, but Julie noted they were quickly shushed by those around them who’d remembered the rules. While she hoped the firm admonishment hadn’t alienated new patrons, she understood it now better than she ever had before. No distractions could be permitted between a Dom and sub, not even for adulation.

When Missive stopped spinning, she was moaning, incoherent pleas. The theater was so still, Julie was certain even the back rows could hear. Des raised a finger and the music stopped. One second, two seconds. He did that deliberate circling of Missive, his gaze taking in everything about her state, and her eyes followed him as if she would do anything he asked her. When he reached her legs, he settled his fingers on her cunt, and lightly stroked.

Once, twice…perhaps a half dozen times, and then she began to come, her cries and the jerking in her bonds the only sounds in the theater. Julie couldn’t look away, caught in something she couldn’t explain. It was both pain and arousal, fear and longing. Then Des’s gaze lifted and locked with hers.

Need replaced everything else. A need for him to be telling her the truth when he said he wanted to be with her. If he’d told her to come to him right then, she might have. She might have knelt on stage, laid her head on his leg and stayed that way. It didn’t make sense. What she was seeing should cause her to retreat, should have her doubting his intentions even more. But what she saw in his eyes was a different message.

This is what I love to do. And I want to do it with you, in a way I won’t do it with anyone else.
Was she crazy for translating all that out of one look? She just didn’t know. She didn’t know what it would take to make her fully believe him, but she knew she wanted to do so, with every aching, pounding, throbbing inch of her body and soul.

Des’s attention returned to Missive as he made sure he gave her a full climax, wresting another cry from her lips as he slid several fingers inside her and removed them to paint her response on her lips. He lifted a hand and the music started again.

After he pushed her back into a slow spin, he retrieved his knife. With the same sweeping movement as before he cut the line, caught her in his arms once more. He rocked her, brought her to the ground, stretched over her as if he might take her then and there, except he still wore the dark trousers. Her legs wrapped around his hips, her arms splayed out on either side of her in complete surrender.

Rising on his knees, he held her that way as he rose to his feet, the muscles in arms and back rippling though he did it without any other obvious effort. He rocked her again, spun and brought them back down to the ground by him dropping to one knee and cradling her head so it didn’t hit the stage. This time he bent and buried his head in her bosom, a supplication. She wrapped her arms around him, over his head, her lips brushing his crown. Then they rolled and he was back in control. He came to his feet with her still wrapped around him. Taking them on a gliding waltz back through the forest, he returned to the tree.

Des rebound Missive in the roots, a different pose this time, not quite as tight a fetal curl. He left one slim leg and delicate foot dangling. When he was done, he sank to one knee by it and pressed his lips to the arch, holding that pose as the curtain closed.

The audience exploded in applause. At the calls of
bravo
, Julie knew Madison would be feeling what Julie had promised—and hoped—she’d experience.

“I think that was all for you and your show, baby girl,” Billie said. “He does performance-worthy sessions, but I’ve never seen him put that much pizazz into it before. Holy God, I wish he’d do it more often.”

The audience seemed to agree, because they were still applauding, as if they wanted a callback right now. Julie experienced an adrenaline surge that was a mix of nerves and ebullience, reflecting her muddle of feelings about all of it.

“Julie.” Harris barked through the radio, disrupting that. “We’ve got a problem. The act we have scheduled right after intermission is going to have to move to the end.”

“What? Why?”

“Come on back to dressing room three. I’ll explain there.”

“Okay. Crap.” She cut the mic then pressed it again. She trusted Harris’s judgment like her own, and they had fifteen minutes to do damage control, which superseded her need for explanation. “Forget that. I’ll see if Shale and Troy can go on right after intermission and tell everyone else we’re moving up one scene for the second act.”

“Got it. And I’ll piss off the crew by making them adjust everything mid-show.” There was laughter in Harris’s voice, because humor was the best defense against hysteria.

Julie clicked off. “Billie, can you hold the fort here?”

“Do what you got to do, honey-chile. Though tell Harris it’s been my experience boys will forgive anything for a good blowjob. Girls too, though sometimes chocolate works.”

“He and I may be on our knees for every one of them by the end of the night,” Julie muttered, dashing away. She ignored Billie’s bark of raucous laughter.