Divine Solace (Nature of Desire 8)

"Noah said Mr. Bergais really liked the oleanders. He misses you delivering them, though, and hopes you'll be back on your feet soon." Setting the watering can aside, Gen came to sit on the patio edge. Though Lyda used a cane more now, she and Gen had a deal that she used the all-terrain chair to move over the uneven ground in the backyard and nursery, so she was pulled up to the patio table in it. Gen's position put her right by the foot. Reaching out, Gen fingered the petal on a spray of lilies, but that wasn't what she wanted to touch. Lyda was out of the cast, her leg bearing two oblong scars from the compound fracture. Since Lyda was wearing shorts, Gen thought about reaching out, tracing those scars. Touching the skin around them.

"He's a nice man. One of my first customers." Lyda put her hand on the side of Gen's face, let her knuckle trail down to her lips. Wondering if Lyda had picked up on her thought, Gen looked up at her. The rest of her stilled for a different reason.

Lyda wasn't given to a lot of affectionate gestures before the accident, but she'd started to do more of them since. Perhaps as a substitute for sex, or maybe because of the change in their relationship. But as nice as that possibility was, the way she was touching Gen now wasn't driven by affection.

Lyda studied her. "I've been watching Noah dig, haul water and sweat in his jeans, sometimes with the T-shirt, sometimes without. Just now, I felt like eating you alive when you were on all fours, pulling up weeds around my petunias. Noah's been watching you with that same kind of hunger. He's also tried his best not to look down my shirt when I'm in this chair, as if somehow he's required to stop showing sexual desire for his Mistress until she says he can switch it back on again." Her lips curved in a tight smile. "It pissed me off, but I get he was trying to be considerate, so don't fuzz up, rabbit. He hasn't been touching you, has he? You've been switching out sleeping in the guesthouse, one of you on the couch, watching over me."

"It seemed the way it should be. Didn't seem right, if you weren't a part of it. If you didn't say it was o

kay." The air around them was getting that still, dense feeling to it, the way it did when sexual desire started to limit oxygen. Gen told herself this was too soon, not to push it. Then her Mistress made it clear that she'd recovered enough that it was no longer Gen's call to make.

"My body may not be up to it yet, but I want to watch you together," Lyda said. "Tonight. After dinner."

Gen had been so stressed and busy, she hadn't let herself give much thought to sex, but as Lyda catalogued how Gen and Noah had been inciting her desire, a door in her own mind opened, surprising her with the pictures her own brain had been storing about every opportunity missed.

Like the day last week she'd come to talk to Noah in the guesthouse, and he'd been making himself breakfast. He was just out of the shower, clad in nothing but a towel... Then there was this week, helping Lyda with a bra that clasped in back, since the broken arm still didn't move so well for such things. Standing over her shoulder, Gen had watched Lyda adjust her breasts in the cups, her shorn hair soft under Gen's fingers as she dared a quick stroke. She'd wanted to lean forward, press her lips to the side of Lyda's throat, let her fingers drop even lower, follow those curves, play in the cleavage, cradle her breasts, explore the soft nipples until they weren't soft anymore... She wanted to feel Noah press his firm body against Gen's...

"You're glazing over just thinking about it. Aren't you?" Lyda asked. Gen's chest tightened, heart overwhelmed and eyes stinging at that familiar sultry purr. "I'm goddamned glad I'm not the only one. Answer your Mistress."

"Yes." Gen shifted onto her knees as Lyda slid a hand along her face, under her hair, and brought her up, right to her mouth.

Gen groaned, her hands clasping Lyda's arm, the other touching Lyda's face, stroking over the new growth of her lovely, lovely hair as Lyda coaxed open her lips and teased her with her tongue. Gen's whole body drew in a shuddering breath, making it obvious how much desire she'd been tamping down as things were getting closer back to normal.

"I want to touch you everywhere," she said against Lyda's mouth.

"We'll see about that. If that's what you want, you better dress for it. Convince me. Both of you. And I want to go out to dinner. Joseph's."

"Italian?" Gen's brows lifted, making Lyda smile. With her pixie hairstyle, the gesture enhanced the size and depth of her gray eyes.

"Yes. Pasta. Bread. Maybe even dessert."

Gen reached out as if to take her temperature and Lyda swatted her hand away. Gen grinned. "Just checking. Was afraid you were delusional."

"My skull was fractured, but my brain was not affected," Lyda retorted.

"Because your head was too hard to break. Doesn't mean it didn't rattle something around in there."

Lyda pushed the chair back. "Just for that, you'll help me bathe and dress tonight."

*

Though Gen had been doing that for a while, with Noah's help when Lyda wasn't able to support her own weight, it was clear tonight was going to be different. Lyda didn't require her help as a recovering accident patient. She was commanding Gen's service, a Mistress who knew the power of giving her submissives access to every inch of her body with no permission to take pleasure from it, except for the intense arousal that denial provided.

When Noah had returned home, Lyda had wasted no time telling him the same thing she'd told Gen. When they'd heard the truck return, heard him talking to the other men, Lyda had called out his name. A few moments later he'd appeared around the corner. He'd been sweaty and dirty, looking as delectably rugged and masculine as Lyda had described. As he pulled off his work gloves, glancing expectantly toward Gen, Lyda's cool voice drew his gaze. "You'll be attending me tonight, Noah," she said. "Do you understand?"

"Yes Mistress."

It had only taken the tone of Lyda's voice, and Gen saw a potent flash of that same fire in Noah's eyes, banked for far too long. Gen felt an answering surge in her own desires. The three of them were going to set the backyard on fire just by thinking of all they wanted from each other. What they'd been wanting from each other. Because that was tied up with deeper, emotional yearnings, it was possible it might just turn them all to ash when fully unleashed. She didn't think any of them cared.

"You'll finish up by six and join us in the bathroom," Lyda had said, and that was that.

Now it was 6:10, and they were in the bathroom. Lyda had ordered Noah to sit on the commode outside the large Jacuzzi tub in his shorts only. In the same breath she'd commanded Gen to strip. Noah was allowed to give her a steadying hand as she stepped into the tub to kneel between Lyda's legs, but then he had to keep his hands to himself. Their Mistress sat on a shower stool in the steaming water. At Lyda's nod, Gen took up the soap and began to wash the long legs under his avid gaze.

Her limbs had lost muscle tone these past weeks, but Lyda was recovering some of it, with her adherence to the rehab schedule and the water aerobics regimen the doctor was permitting her. Though Lyda grumbled about being part of the old lady water brigade, Gen thought she was actually enjoying it. Now.

Lyda had met many challenges in her life, but dealing with a body incapable of what she demanded from it had not been one of them. The morning of the third class, she hadn't felt well, but she'd insisted on going. Inevitably, she started to feel nauseous and barely made it to the side of the pool. She couldn't make it out in time, but Gen was already ready with the airsickness bag. Lyda lost her breakfast and stood there shivering, her head down. That was when Gen heard a muttered "Fuck" and realized tears were running down her Mistress's face. Lyda had her head bowed to hide them, shoulders clenched like a fist, her anger at her own weakness.

That was when several of the elderly women in the class came over. One of them put a hand on Lyda's back, another touching her shorn hair. "It's all right, honey... You're doing great... Don't you worry about it. We won't tell you how many of us with our weak bladders pee right here in this pool whenever we cough or sneeze. It's a good thing they use lots of chlorine."