The Touch of Bliss — A Sensual Reckoning (Muse of Shadow)
Read The Touch of Bliss — A Sensual Reckoning (Muse of Shadow) Online
Authors: Caelyn Alba
T H E T O U C H
O F B L I S S
A Sensual Reckoning
by
Caelyn Alba
Editing, Cover
Design, and Typography by (studio)Effigy
Photo by Wallenrock
CONTENTS
T H E T O U C H
O F B L I S S
A Sensual Reckoning
A woman whose relationship has broken down around her
takes a solo spa vacation that was supposed to have been her and her husband’s
dream getaway — and discovers that some dreams need first to be brought
to light before they can come true.
This 16,000-word erotic novelette is a graphically
detailed exploration of romance and sexuality. It is meant for adults only.
• • •
She pushed me back to the bed. She laid me down gently, letting
me shift back to watch her standing before me. She had a full-length mirror
mounted on the nearest wall, so that I saw her twice over, front and side.
So beautiful. Oh so beautiful.
In the light of her eyes, I could see the same hunger I felt in
myself. That hunger was for me. She wanted me, and I was hers.
So beautiful. Oh so beautiful.
She slid up against me, working her way up me with tongue and
lips. My calves, my thighs, my sopping sex. One kiss on my throbbing clitty,
then up across my belly. Both my breasts, sucking each of my nipples longingly
in turn. My neck, my cheek, my mouth, her tongue inside me, long and soft as my
tongue slipped past it and inside her.
“I want you…” I whispered when I could breathe again.
Without a word, she spun herself around. I felt her spreading my
legs as she spread hers around my head. And then the delicious shadow of her
thighs and her wet bush covered me, and my tongue was up and inside her, even
as her tongue found my clitty and worked it hard.
I climaxed twice in short order. It might have been even more
times, but each wave of sensation pushed through into another, so that I
couldn’t tell where one started and the next began. I felt Serina cry out on
top of me more than once, but the sound of her voice only made my own pleasure that
much more intense, until the pounding of my pulse in my ears drowned out
everything else…
T H E T O U C H
O F B L I S S
Part One
I CAN TASTE HER even through my tears. I can feel the
wetness of her on my lips, as I can feel my own wetness where my fingers trace
their way between my thighs.
The tears are because everything changes tonight, and as deep
as I fall into the feel of her, this scares me. My breasts are soft against
hers, our upthrust nipples touching as I caress her with all of me, with all I
have, all I am. As hungrily as I embrace her, dropping slowly to my knees
before her, it scares me.
“Tell me what you want,” she says…
“What the fuck do you want, Lori?”
The last thing D___ said to me before he left. I can still
remember the swearing, can still feel his anger.
I’ve been thinking about that far too much. Replaying the scene
in my head as I do, thinking of all the things I should have said, only too
late.
You want more than he can give you.
So many times that I’d felt it, so many times that I’d thought it.
And all I could think about on the long drive out of the city was that if he
showed up right now, even as angry as I was, as hurt and lonely as he had left
me — I still didn’t know whether I’d be able to say it to him.
He’d picked out the resort for our fifth anniversary, just as he
made the arrangements for most of our holidays. He liked to organize, he always
said. D___ liked to make sure everything was perfect. But even as he’d been
making his perfect plans, things at home had been getting less perfect for so
long now.
We both knew it. We both saw it happening, watching it unfold over
what must have been a year of increasingly random and pointless fights. Both of
us were working far too many hours. Both of us were feeling like something had
changed. The seven-year-itch, my sister called it when I tried the one time to
talk to her about it, but I was never very good at talking.
I was always better at listening, even when D___ had totally lost
it the weekend before.
“You don’t know what I go through trying to keep you happy!” he
yelled. He yelled a lot of things that night, but that’s the one I remember.
Because I remember telling him that everything he did made me happy, even
though it was less true than it had been for months.
“What do you want, Lori?”
You want to feel like it was before. You want to feel new, but
you feel old in a way that you never expected this relationship, this life to
feel so soon…
I was always better at listening. So I didn’t say anything. I
just listened to him talking about needing space, and I let him throw a beer
bottle that smashed the glass in the John Lysak print he’d bought us for our
first anniversary. I let him walk away.
He’d picked out the resort because he liked everything to be
perfect, and it was. Except for the bit about him not being here with me, that
is. I’d never heard of the place before, had never driven the wine country back
roads that the GPS directed me along. It was the middle of nowhere, vineyards
in full leaf and tall stands of white pine rising to frame an impossibly blue
sky. I saw the glass gleam of the hotel’s floor-to-ceiling windows as I rounded
the final curve, and even from a distance, it was beautiful.
More beautiful than you deserve.
I don’t remember what I said to the concierge at the check-in
desk when he asked me if Mr. ____ was arriving later. The credit card still had
both our names on it, so that was all that really mattered in the end.
My mind was a blur as I was passed off to a hostess for the full
introduction of the resort’s schedules and events, spa sessions and special
treatments, fireside patios and walking trails. A bellhop swept in to whisk my
bags up to the room. A trainer from the spa and wellness center smiled as she took
me on the tour that I wasn’t thinking quickly enough to beg off.
BLISS
is what they called the facilities, and the name with
its stylized font and all caps seemed terribly ironic given the darkness of my
thoughts. I felt all the trainer’s tips and schedule information forgotten as
soon as it was spoken, but I smiled with a polite
That sounds wonderful
at
intervals. I was always better at listening.
By the time I’d made it to my room, I had resolved to not leave
it for the next eight days.
All of this is a mistake, because mistakes are what you do
best. Thinking that coming here would help get your mind off him. But all you
can feel now is the emptiness in the room that he would have filled.
It was a beautiful room, for all that. White and pristine, all
chrome and lacquered hardwood. The clean European style that D___ liked.
I spent some time at the vast picture window overlooking the
vineyards below.
I spent some time on the bed. I cried for a while, but not for as
long as I thought I would.
I ordered in room service. I ate alone. I drank three glasses of
wine from the complimentary bottle of red at the dark oak breakfast nook. I had
a long bath in the open-to-the-living-room tub, with its view of the falling
dark through the floor-to-ceiling windows. None of it did anything to ease the
tension and the darkness inside me.
As I was toweling off, I saw a white paper slipped in under the
door.
BLISS,
it said across the top.
It was a spa schedule, as I
saw when I padded over to pick it up. I’d already looked at it, another copy still
sitting where I’d left it on the room’s massive oak desk.
This one had a section highlighted, though.
9 p.m. to 10
p.m. — European Style — Clothing Optional Sauna, Hot Tub,
Steam Room.
I’d heard that from the trainer who showed me around the
facilities. Something else that D___ would have liked, I thought numbly. We’d
never done any clothing optional vacationing before, but he always liked to
show me off.
Left to my own devices, I was typically more comfortable in
t-shirt and shorts than anything else. But even for the drive up, I’d worn the
thigh-hugging skirt and the tight mesh top I’d bought for the holiday that
wasn’t happening now. I was wearing a camisole under the mesh today, but I’d
gone without when I modeled it for him weeks ago. Before things had gone so bad.
I went braless for D___ whenever he asked, conscious of how good it made him
feel for me to be so exposed in public. The few times we’d been to the nude
beach at Magnuson Park at his suggestion, he talked about how he liked to put
me on display. Always spending more time watching other guys looking at me than
he spent looking at other women.
Almost before I realized I was doing it, I had slipped on the spa
robe and sandals from outside the bathroom instead of digging my nightshirt out
of my suitcase.
You want to feel like it was before. You want to feel brand new…
On the long drive up, I realized how long it had been since I was
happy. But even more frustrating, no matter how hard I tried, it seemed as if I
couldn’t remember how to be happy anymore.
Something needed to change. I needed to change.
I had decided to make use of the reservation D___ had made for us
because in the blank pain that settled inside me after he walked out, I told
myself that I could enjoy myself without him. That I could be me again.
Time for you to figure out what that means…
BLISS
was busy that night but not overly so. Maybe two
dozen people were scattered across a stylish lounge decked out in wicker and white
tile, getting ready for or cooling off after massage sessions and yoga. I could
see roughly the same number partaking of the saunas and baths beyond, about
half of whom appeared to be taking advantage of European hour. I’ve never been
much of a voyeur, so I had no problem keeping my gaze to myself. I didn’t
recognize either of the attendants on duty from my earlier tour, but I smiled
politely and shook my head when they asked if I needed help with anything.
What I needed was the hot tub, I thought. A place to try again to
drain away the worry that still flooded through me, and which the bath upstairs
had barely made a dent in. The wine from earlier was kicking in, though. In the
mirrors that lined the deck around the tubs, I could see a faint flush in my
paler-than-normal cheeks.
Seven people were already in the least occupied tub, none of them
paying me any mind as I approached. Three of the women were topless, I could
see, all of them older than me. I couldn’t tell what the three men were wearing
beneath the swirling water. A younger woman wore a modest one-piece, lying back
alone where the others looked like couples, talking and laughing quietly among
themselves.
I took a minute to unfold and refold my towel at the bench
adjacent, as I felt the attack of self-consciousness that I’d known would hit
me. D___ and I had always hot-tubbed whenever we stayed at hotels. He liked to
pick out which bikini I’d wear, rubbing my belly lightly under the water while
I floated to put my breasts on display for him. Though I’m not an exhibitionist
by nature, I confess that I used to get a little thrill when he showed me off.
One of those things that I would do for him, but which I’d never really done
for myself.
I needed that thrill for myself, I knew. I needed to feel it for
me.
I slipped the robe off casually, feeling the moist warmth of the
air against my body. My heart was beating quickly, which I knew was ridiculous
even as it made me smile.
This is good. This is what you need.
I took a moment to fold my robe and place it on the bench next to
the towel. I took a deep breath as I kicked off my sandals and turned around,
and I felt silly when I realized that I was expecting all eyes to be on me. This
was totally natural, I told myself. This was what it was supposed to be like,
just being myself. Not showing off for him but being comfortable in my own
skin.
Quite literally.
I was smiling again as I slipped into the water.
Whether it was the wine or whether the presence of other people
simply made it harder to feel sorry for myself, I quickly felt the tension and
the worry of the previous days begin to slip away. The water was perfectly
sultry, not so hot that I felt the need to hop out every few minutes.
The older couples were doing so, and showing me from the corner
of my half-closed eyes that the three men were as naked as their partners. Even
beyond them being too old for me, though, I felt no compulsion to take a longer
look. With all that happened since D___ walked out, including our last bout of
angry sex two days before the final fight that pushed him away, I was about as
far from feeling lascivious as I could possibly be. From where I was at, it
would be a long walk to even feel social.
Thankfully, the others in the tub all kept to themselves, no one
even greeting me where I pushed off to one side and slipped down beneath the
water. Thinking about it, I supposed that must be a kind of common courtesy during
clothing-optional hours, where it would be far too easy to mistake polite friendliness
for a come-on. That all worked just fine for me, though. As much as I was
feeling better for having the company of other people, I was happy to still be essentially
alone.
Where I rested against the padded edge of the tub, I had closed
my eyes. As I felt myself drifting away, deliciously sleepy and drained of all
worry, I felt a leg brush up against mine.
When D___ and I used to tub together, he always kept me close at
his side, making sure I was pressed to him. Even as he liked other guys to
look, I guess he had a strict
no touching
policy. It thus felt even stranger
than expected to feel this contact — and then to realize as the contact
continued that it wasn’t just random chance.
This wasn’t someone bumping into me and quickly pulling away.
Someone was running a foot gently up my leg, toe-walking along my outer thigh.
I opened my eyes. The woman in the white one-piece had shifted
around to sit across from me. She smiled as her small foot gently rubbed my
naked leg.
This is so not you…
She was of an age with me. Maybe a few years younger. Or was it just
her petite frame that made her look that way? Her white one-piece made a stark
contrast to the dark-chocolate tones of her skin. Her hair was long and black
and corkscrew-curled, tied back and hanging down into the water beside her.
This is nothing you’ve ever done.
She was watching me expectantly, her touch oh so gentle.
Tentative, as if she was expecting me to push her off or to make a scene.
I didn’t do either. I just lay there, trying to process the
sensation and the thoughts rushing through my head with the gentle cadence of
the water flowing past and around me.
This is nothing you’ve ever done, nothing you’ve ever even
fantasized about.
I felt her toes clench against my thigh, pressing in like tiny
fingers as they ran up and down, up and down.
Which means this is exactly what you need…