Thing Five: Erotica (attempted)...

A Brief Conversation about Cultural Reactions to Sexuality and Gender Roles.

A Micro Short Story by Sean McGovern

For Lexi Johnson, didn’t think I’d do it.

“This is the problem with being a woman in power,” she said, checking the straps around her supplicant’s wrists.  The male had been stripped, shaved, and bathed before being brought in, and now was asleep on the table.  His spread eagle pose revealed all to her, and she nodded.  It was…an acceptable offering to her.  “If I were to do this solely for my own pleasure, then they’d say I was loose, or wanton.  If I was doing this only for my master, then I’d be a whore – using my body in service for another, and not truly owning it.  How sad is it, little Severian, that even here, in my place of power, I still have to consider how those who brought you to me think of what is going to take place here?”  She let her long, tapered fingers run from the strap down Severian’s arm.  It was thin, not the kind the other slaves would trust to protect them from the lash of their wardens or the hands of the freemen.  Down onto his chest, savoring the bones of the ribs and the mussels that twitched and flexed at her caress.  She hummed to herself, tracing the lines of his torso down to his hip and then back to his shoulder.  Down again.  And back up, relishing the pliant strength of the body before her.

She had had men before – enough to have given her some stories that she rarely told others.  They were small stories, secret things, and banding them about in public was for…well, for those that Severian made work with on a daily basis.  No, anyone who lived within a tower, especially one as storied and respected as this, would only talk of such things within their sealed salons.  And she would only do so when she knew the servants were far, far removed.  She had always had respect for the unseen, the staff, be they employed or bound to her service.

She felt him begin to stir, trying to roll over in his sleep.  It had been a fair span of time since she had watched another sleep who wasn’t wracked by illness or screaming in mental torment.  True, he wasn’t really a lover, and would never be in the traditional sense, but she found it relaxing all the same.  She felt a slight smile slowly grow on her face as she observed the sleep of the simple man before her.  “One last pleasant wake up,” she sighed, “that all I can promise you.”  She came around the table, and stood there, pressing her abdominals against his head with only the velvet of her gown separating them.  Her hands flattened across his pectorals and she moved them in what she hope was a delicious slowness down his torso towards his groin, before she brought her fingernails to bear on the twitching skin.  With the same control, she brought her hands back up.  She felt the press of her gown against both their bodies, and the pleasant flush of heat pouring from him.

He felt vital – there was no other word for it.  The smell was a bit off-putting – she preferred a more earthy, animal smell to lead into her couplings, but the perfumes and ointments were a part of the ritual.  She had once met a traveler, a strange looking man who had claimed to come from a land on the far side of burning lands, who had claimed that a woman’s sweat was an aphrodisiac to him, and she had understood him from the reverse.  The oils and petals were fine – maybe even romantic – but for this, it was a bit too much.  She wondered what had happened to Eban, scion of Rikhart, wondered if the ritual would have been better with someone from the far side of the hell sands, or one whom she had wanted to mate with, but who had seemed completely clueless to her advances.

Severian, with his powerful essence, the heat of his life boiling up from the mostly slack mussels – this was a body she knew, the weak portions where he would cringe and smile if nipped and kissed, one leading into the other.  She knew the places to grip on his shoulders that would urge him or force him to slow down.  She spoke a word and kissed her forefinger.  She ran the tip over his lips, feeling the soft lips.  She pressed it within, past his teeth and onto his warm tongue.  She smiled, feeling the tongue wrap and writhe around her digit, taking in the spell.  She removed her finger, and her smile turned wolfish as Severian woke, gasping for air and trying to sit.  “Stay down,” she said, “waking will go easier.”

“Yes, mistress,” Severian gasped.  She watched the spell’s path through his eyes.  Severian shook his head.  “You were saying?”

“I was saying that my situation is precarious – I must enact the ritual.  It really is the only way that I can confront the Elergast, and so save the city – but the ritual’s nature will cause those I save to look down on me.”  She sigh, resting one hand on Severian’s pectorals and making a lazy spiral from its edge towards the nipple, her other hand resting on her hip, knuckles flexed.  “Why is mating the great evil?  If I killed you outright, no one would think of it, just the proper actions of a wicked queen.  That the way of drawing power out of you is pleasurable for both of us?  Suddenly the gods have nineteen pamphlets explaining why I’m bound to the burning sands!  I mean, for all of the things I’ve done,” she reached the nipple and pinched, causing Severian to gasp.  She pivoted, and leaned to repeat the process with Severian’s rippling abs, now with his bellybutton as her target.  “…through her ribs, but give someone an orgasm on an alter to the goddess of death and fucking and that’s what they want to focus on.”

“It…it is strange, mistress,” said Severian, his eyes locked on her pale, thin fingers.  “I recall there being more…oh.”  He said.  “This is the power drain ritual to She-that-lurks-in-the-shadows.”

“Yes,” she said, letting her hand go flat as she passed over Severian’s bellybutton and down his pelvis to her true target.  She let it past her hands between middle and ring fingers, and massaged around the base of his member.  She had to smile at his whimper.  “Think of it, Severian.  Not of my hand…picture if this if roles were reversed.  If it were my frame strapped down here, and your hand upon my mons?  Somehow, that wickedness,” she watched him rise, the object of her attention slowly filling up with lust, “would be more acceptable as it happens in the streets.”  She watched it rise further.  “And they say only women have flowers.”  She sighed, shaking her head.  She drew both hands across his body slowly, tracing the tensing, clenching mussels.  They met at his sternum, and she brought them to her own shoulders.  She took a breath, and lowered the shoulders of her gown.  She straightened her arms, and allowed the gown to fall from her. 

She had always been pleased with her form, having taken care of it with more exercise than those of her status often did.  She wondered blandly if she had reinforced the idea of a beautiful aristocrat or broke down the idea of a hideous witch among the lower classes with her appearance.  Perhaps it was both, or neither.  She wished she didn’t think on it, but she did.  Still, she knew she had was brigands called “curves in all the right places,” with breasts at the slightly small side of full and hips a bit wider than she would have liked.  But she believed it worked fairly well on the others – those who came to her, willing or not.  “Still, all of this is just idle chatter.”  She returned her hands to his frame.  “You know what will happen here?”

“I do, mistress,” he said, polite to the last.  He took a sharp break when cup and squeezed him.  “There are worse ways.”

“True,” she said.  “I wonder if you will think of any when the time comes.”  She slowly raised and lowered her right hand, and gripped the dagger in the other.  “Perhaps it’s best not to worry, and just enjoy the build up.”