Sweet Enchantress (29 page)
Authors: Parris Afton Bonds
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #Medieval, #Historical Romance
Baldwyn
’s forehead knit in confusion, and she elaborated. "It is that liquid form, the female fluids, that carry the most powerful of energies.”
"But Paxton
’s Church teaches the sin of carnality,” Baldwyn responded in a frayed voice.
"His Church te
aches also the gift of selflessness,” she reminded him.
She knew that one
’s sexual energy was the closest energy to the Divine force because during lovemaking merging took place and the life force radiated and created life. It was the Divine reaching out through matter in order to experience Itself.
She understood what the nature of this sacrifice demanded of her. But
was the coarser earthly love given by one physical and emotional body for another worth her soul? Was this what Divine love was?
The answer came to her in a small, still inner voice. By losing, we find. By giving, we receive.
She drew a steadying breath, then touched Baldwyn’s shoulder. "I wish to be alone with Paxton for the next forty-eight hours.”
Baldwyn rose from the stool. Iolande was there at his side at once. He said, "I can only hope John and his soldiers can keep the mob
outside at bay for that long.”
When she was alone with Paxton, she barred the door and opened the shutters to the fresh night air. Then she disrobed and went to his side. As never before, she devoted her complete self, every particle of her being, to focusing on his recovery. She
used her energy in so many ways—in her hands to heal, in her throat to speak her love, in her flesh upon his.
Each hour she could see him growing stronger and each hour further debilitated her. She was like a sand glass, with time and life draining from he
r.
That hour between dark and dawn, a thunderous noise echoed along the corridors of the floor below. The mob had broken through the donjon door!
Even Paxton stirred at the roar of enraged voices. His lids opened. Confusion at their nakedness and the shouting outside narrowed his eyes. He made to rise and fell back weakly.
“
What – ”
"You have been very ill,”
she said, feeling it an effort even to speak. The moment had arrived, she knew, when she and Paxton were balanced, when even another hour would tip the scales of life’s breath in the other direction. The time had come for her ultimate seduction of her lover.
She moved
up over him. Bewildered, uncertain, his gaze roamed her face for answers. Her kiss was her answer. His eyes took light, and she knew he understood.
She stroked the broad planes of his face, his chest where the hair whorled around his nipples, his groin, the base of his sex until it was turgid. Paxton's hands closed over her and
drew her down under him. With the riotous mob thundering throughout the chateau, he took possession of her slowly, lovingly, while the moment crescendoed. She saw in his eyes the reflection of that wonder in her own, that recognition of souls who learn how to dance through each other. She felt she was drawing near a most exquisitely powerful energy source.
Inside her,
a voice, her Divine self, whispered, "You cannot merge until the heart opens.”
She let her heart
’s chambers flood with her love for Paxton. A frightening feeling of traveling through the vortex of a tunnel of darkness clamped around her. "Love is a refining, sublimating force,” her inner voice said, urging her forward.
She fought
off her paralyzing fear and continued her solitary journey. She could feel the centrifugal force around her, spinning off that which did not have life. What was happening to her? An energy was seeking through her its own kind, gathering itself with a perfect pulsation until . . . it formed one law, one work, one vessel. Male activity from the gold, female from the silver, to get from the union that which perfects the mercury of both metals. Both fused into one symbol. She understood now the secret that alchemy held for the seeker of truth of knowledge: that the union of male and female form one powerful, indestructible whole!
She held the flicker to the flame and felt the flutter of the Divine. Waves of energy kept flooding over her. Around her and Paxton shimmered a radiance, that ineffable light that haloed them as they
drew higher and nearer the well-spring of creation.
Between them the circuit at last closed, and a sudden joy surged through them with their
transcendence. Their conjoined energy had created something entirely new.
At that penultimate moment, her finite mind cross
ed the threshold to another dimension, and she recognized her soul’s counterpart in Paxton!
The wind sang, the leaves clapped their hands, and the morning stars exploded their fireworks. In that instant, she
realized that surrender brought not death nor the inability to survive, but always the birth of something new. By surrendering, everything changed, so that she and Paxton were a part of that grand flow.
As all moments must, this one, too, passed. The tumu
lt in the chateau was gone, and all was quiet while the universe spun its cosmic web of pearls.
Gradually, a strange, orange glow filled the room, and Paxton rose to walk across to the window. Beyond the chateau, a fire raged. “
What is it?” he asked.
“
A midsummer bonfire,” she said from their bed. Later, much later, she would explain to him what her intuition told her with a certainty, that the fire was Francis de Beauvais’s immolation on the faggots of a pyre. The mob had found its witch.
He returned to th
e bed, and drew her into the circle of his arms. She allowed her lips to curl in a lovely, subtle smile. As she had neared the moment of dying, laying down her body with grace and embracing death from the position of mastery and not fear, she knew that she was forever after the master. Or the mistress, she amended.
She snuggled within Paxton's embrace as he began to softly kiss that delicious area behind and beneath her ear, but he ceased this delightful
pastime to raise on one elbow. His big hand aligned itself with the contours of her cheek. “You are wondrous beyond all women,” he breathed.
She reached up to trace his upper lip. There was such joy in her that she found it difficult to be serious. "Would you by any chance, sire, be needing an excellent alch
emist at your castle in Pembroke?”
He would not match her light mood. “
Pembroke is in the past.”
She was afr
aid to hope. “Truly, you do not intend to fight for England?”
"I am finished with violence.”
Then, with a solemn countenance, he drew her from the warmth of their coverlets to stand before him. Next, he astonished her by kneeling on one knee before her. Tears glistened in his eyes. “I am your liege man of life and limb and of earthly and eternal worship, my Lady Dominique, my love.”
T H E E N D
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Parris Afton Bonds is the mother of five sons and the author of more than thirty-five published novels. She is the co-founder of and first vice president of Romance Writers of America. Declared by ABC’s Nightline as one of three best-selling authors of romantic fiction, the award winning Parris Afton Bonds has been interviewed by such luminaries as Charlie Rose and featured in major newspapers and magazines as well as published in more than a dozen languages. She donates her time to teaching creative writing to both grade school children and female inmates. The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer who has given outstandingly of time and talent to other writers. Prestigious recipients of the Parris Award include Tony Hillerman and the Pulitzer nominee Norman Zollinger.
Connect with Parris at:
http://www.parrisaftonbonds.com