Mistress of Night and Dawn (35 page)

The whine of Tristan’s voice floated into her ear as if in a dream. ‘Hey . . . that’s not how it’s supposed to be—’

Andrei interrupted him with his own words.

‘Your future is not written in the past, Aurelia,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘You can choose it. Carve your own path. Our path.’

‘Yes,’ she replied, and in that moment she knew what would come next. She took each of Andrei’s hands in her own and gripped him tightly and then she focused all of her attention, every synapse in her brain and the tip of every nerve ending in her body, on accessing the power that she knew she now held within her and then she directed it towards Andrei, multiplying the current that always flowed between them when they touched by a thousand fold until she felt him twitch and shudder against her as if in the throes of orgasm.

The congregation around them hissed sharply. A ripple of shocked whispers passed through the crowd.

Andrei’s body went limp in her arms.

Aurelia tore off her blindfold.

There it was, on his chest, clearly visible beneath the silvery light of a moon that was nearing fullness.

The bright-red outline of a tattooed heart, beating directly over his own. A perfect mirror image to the one that was etched on Aurelia’s chest and was now pumping in unison.

Andrei opened his eyes and looked down at his chest and then up at Aurelia, who was bent over him, gazing at the mark on his skin in wonderment.

Tristan?

Andrei?

Even though her mind was still torn between the two men, opposites of each other in lust and personalities, it appeared that her heart had reached a decision. Her hearts.

‘I am yours, Aurelia,’ Andrei whispered softly. And Aurelia’s hearts and body told her that all the women he had experienced in the past were only shadows that passed in the night and that, when dawn came, they would always belong together. The dark, inviting cloud that Tristan had briefly and tantalisingly become began to recede from her mind and his superficial marks on her body faded into insignificance.

She rose to her feet and there was a solemn hush.

The Ball came to Aurelia in a dream.

For five days and five nights she was consumed by images, as if being assaulted by the very fabric of her own mind. Her body was racked by powerful orgasms as she slept and she often awoke clammy, shivering and aroused well beyond any usual measure. Sex had become the focus of not just her life but her entire being and Aurelia fairly vibrated with it. She had now harnessed the power of her tattoos and with one focused thought she could evoke a tapestry of pleasure across her flesh or signal her mood, needs and desires by displaying a particular individual illustration but when she was in her bedroom, removed from her responsibilities and curled up in Andrei’s strong embrace, then her skin was like a landscape across which every emotion and thought that entered her head also burned across her frame in bright pictorial form.

Sometimes they made love as they slept. So in tune were Aurelia’s desires with her mind, heart and physical needs that she could not always discern which part of her it was that moved her limbs. It was as if her body and brain had married so completely that the notion of conscious thought or deliberate movement now seemed obsolete. When she was together with her consort and free to be herself without regard for convention or restraint then she behaved as an animal, and so did Andrei. Together they were like the eye of a storm. When her body was joined with his, then the rest of the world fell away. As he moved inside her, Aurelia felt at once as though she was flying, floating permanently on wings of lust and as if she had come home, grounded upon the island of his flesh. She was no longer just a traveller or a citizen of the Ball, permanently on the move. Andrei was her anchor and she his. Each of them was the axis around which the other’s world revolved upon.

And so, when a still-slumbering Aurelia shuddered in Andrei’s arms and he held her tight as the markings on her skin burst into vivid pictures that seared across her belly and her breasts and thighs, it was Andrei who read the patterns of the Ball aloud to her, as if the lines of her tattoos were a map that would lead them to treasure, or at least a clue to what the theme of the next celebration would be. The date had already been set and each day that went by without an answer from the Mistress-in-Waiting was another day lost that could have been used to make the necessary arrangements. Time was ticking by, as Madame Denoux never failed to remind her.

‘You’ve been dreaming about rope again,’ Andrei said to her when dawn broke and Aurelia’s eyelids finally fluttered open. She was nestled into the crook of his arm, her head resting in the space between his head and his shoulder. Her arm was haphazardly slung over his chest and their legs were entwined. They often woke together to find that they had wrapped themselves up in each other’s arms like a parcel in the night, as if their bodies sought the closeness that their souls had already found. Since the formal element of her training had been completed, Aurelia had been offered a much more elaborate suite in a central downtown Seattle hotel that the Network used as a base to accommodate its more exclusive clientele, but Aurelia had declined. She had grown used to the restful surrounds of the Japanese gardens, the light that streamed in over the bed through the expansive glass windows and the comforting presence of PJ, who still occasionally slept at the foot of her bed when Andrei was absent on business.

Aurelia blinked, shaking the last vestiges of sleep away and coming to her senses again. Her dreams of late had been so vivid, so all-consuming, that she wasn’t always sure what was real and what had occurred only in her imagination.

‘Yes,’ she replied, snuggling up against him and planting a kiss on his cheek. Andrei hadn’t shaved for a few days and his stubble was rough against her lips. ‘But it wasn’t a bad dream.’ She tried to replay her night-time clouds back again, but remembering the images that had filled her mind as she slept was like trying to catch wisps of smoke between her fingertips and the more she grasped at them the quicker they dissolved again. The specifics evaded her, but she could always recall the feelings and sensations that had been evoked.

Andrei’s hands were warm against her face as he threaded his fingers through her hair, his habit when she was distressed or needed soothing.

‘A new tattoo appeared. A tree. Here,’ he said, tracing the shape of a trunk from her belly to her chest and a series of sinuous branches over her breasts. Aurelia took hold of his hand and pressed it against her sternum. She knew that he had memorised the position of every mark on her body, as if the images had been burned onto his heart as well as her flesh.

The next night she dreamed of water. Of drowning and yet being able to breathe.

‘Your parents?’ Andrei asked her.

Aurelia shook her head. ‘No. Not like that,’ she said. ‘Not a nightmare. I was swimming. Human but able to live beneath the surface of a lake. Like a mermaid.’

Another night, she imagined being suspended in mid-air on the wings of angels and the next of being set alight with fire that didn’t burn. Each dream left her with a corresponding mark. On the fifth night she didn’t dream at all but was overcome by an overwhelming urge to make love and she woke to find herself straddling Andrei’s hips, his cock already hard in response to the urgency of her need. He opened his eyes and she guided him inside her and groaned as he placed a firm hand on either side of the base of her spine and moved her back and forward until she began to grind her clitoris against the base of his torso and she leaned forward and took hold of his shoulders and thrust herself against him until she was spent and then collapsed across his chest. Andrei held her flat against him and they fell asleep again still joined, not waking until the shadows that tumbled in through the glass-walled pagoda grew long and goosebumps appeared on their flesh as the air chilled.

‘The elements,’ Andrei said to her that evening. ‘These dreams that you can’t remember and the images that go with them. Earth, water, air, fire. And the last one, energy. Aether. It’s the five elements.’ He furrowed his brow in thought. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever celebrated all five elements. Aspects of them, of course. Legend has it that there was an inferno-themed Ball, on a riverboat, once. And the zodiac signs, which include water . . . But I don’t think we’ve ever had the elements.’

‘Then that shall be my Ball. Our Ball.’

She rang the bell to summon PJ, who in turn called Madame Denoux who, when advised of Aurelia’s desires and decision, began to set the preparatory gears in motion.

Aurelia’s input was largely artistic, and as the Mistress-in-Waiting she had the final say over everything, from the theme, the location and the guest list to the shape of the glasses and the flavour of the drinks and canapés. It was a little like planning her own wedding, something that unlike so many of the other girls that she had grown up with – with the exception of the ever-independent Siv, of course – she had given precious little thought to.

Initially the task had seemed overwhelming and she was conscious of the need to prove herself worthy of her title, but once she discovered that virtually every idea that she could dream up, even the most bizarre, expensive or downright fantastical was somehow possible through the seemingly endless funds in the Network’s mysterious coffers, the talents of the performers within their employ and that unexplainable and mystical element that Aurelia had come to think of as simply the innate magic of sex, then organising the Ball became a joy. Soon she devoted every moment to its inception, catching her sleep and meals in snatches as she worked through the process of turning her fevered dreams into reality.

It would be held in England, her adoptive homeland. Aurelia wanted to root herself in the Ball and for this one night to be grounded in not just the country where she had grown up but also a place with a history that stretched back through the ages, a place where she imagined that the ghosts of kings and queens would be smiling down at them as revellers danced on ancient stone floors.

A country house was located that was situated on expansive and secluded grounds to the north of London in the Chiltern Hills and belonged to one of the Ball’s longest-standing associates. To Aurelia, who had travelled with Andrei to the location before confirming her selection, the house could be more readily considered a mansion with its opulent decor of crystal chandeliers, velvet carpets and an elaborately carved mahogany banister that wound alongside a staircase so vast it was practically a promenade. Her mind was made up when she noticed the wide French doors that swung open, as if by magic, when she approached to reveal a garden the size of a football pitch and leading onto a private wood.

‘Perfect,’ she said. Her host and the owner of the property, Thomas, a tall man in his late fifties with a brusque and overtly prim manner that was distinctly at odds with his eccentric hairstyle and the pair of leopard-print horn-rimmed spectacles that sat at the very tip of his elongated nose nodded, and the deal was sealed.

Throughout the duration of their guided tour, Thomas had walked ahead of them. He had the straight posture and deliberate gait of an aristocrat but far more striking was his companion, a young woman who was connected to him by way of a leash that was attached to the silver collar that encircled her neck. She was naked and crawling on her hands and knees but in the manner of a lioness rather than a dog, each sinuous swing of her hips moving her long legs forward as comfortably as if she were born to travel like an animal rather than on two legs like a human being. Finally, as they were ready to depart, she stood in order to bid them goodbye. She was no regular human, in Aurelia’s view. Her eyes were a dappled green like the colour of a snake’s skin and her lips as red and luscious as the apple that Eve had bitten, though seemingly free of rouge or any other artificial enhancement. Aurelia’s attention was inevitably drawn lower. There, just half a finger above her completely smooth pussy, was the tattoo of a barcode, and next to it a number ‘1’. When her eyes met Aurelia’s, an understanding passed between them. A realisation of the strength that they each possessed behind their respective positions.

Andrei had explained to Aurelia before they entered that the woman marked with the number 1 was what the Ball called ‘the holy whore’, a vessel for the enjoyment of others. She had been ‘tested’ for the position of Mistress before Aurelia’s existence had been discovered, and her capacity for pleasure was found to be endless, but she desired only to be a submissive and possessed none of the streak of dominance that came so naturally to Aurelia and which was essential to the role of the Ball’s leadership.

Number 1 had chosen to become a slave and to the surprise of everyone on the Ball’s committee she had chosen Thomas as her Master. It was assumed that Tristan would be the natural choice but the holy whore had preferred the eccentric, bespectacled Englishman who now held the key to the golden padlock that secured the collar around her throat.

Aurelia made a mental note to add Number 1 to the guest list, and not just as Thomas’s plus one.

Days were spent watching the potential performers demonstrate their talents. Aurelia had delegated a good portion of this task for the sake of time, but she insisted on selecting the ballerinas who would perform in the water act. She had chosen to recreate a scene from
Swan Lake
where the two lead dancers would experience a rebirth through drowning. It was morbid, perhaps, but her own way of mourning the manner of her parents’ passing and bringing both closure and joy to it.

For the role of Odette, Aurelia nominated a Russian dancer named Luba who rose from the water so gracefully it seemed that she was a part of it, as if the very atoms that formed her flesh had melded together from the mist that hovers over the sea after a storm. Without being given any prior knowledge of the water theme she had even auditioned to Debussy’s ‘La Mer’. Aurelia was unsurprised to learn that Luba, who moved with such uncanny grace, had already been spotted by the Network’s scouts and had also been tested for the role of Mistress before Aurelia’s rediscovery. Andrei had danced with her and he had reported back that she was an exceptionally beautiful and talented woman, but not the next Mistress of the Ball. Her heart belonged firmly to another, and she would never be able to give herself fully in the way that was required.