Venus For A Day

Chapter 8

Who could turn back?

I could.

I really could.

I could strut up those four measly steps from my galley to the deck, point a heavy finger toward the dock and tell Venus just where to go. Then I could pour myself a stiff drink and pretend today never happened. In fact, I could get so drunk I'd pass out and wake up to think all of this was nothing but a long and very strange dream.

Yes, I could do that. At least, I think I could. Who knows how much of my mind Venus already has hold of? Who knows if I'm not just a naive prisoner?

But even if I could pull away from her for good, what would I do with HER? Would SHE just go away, now that I have heard her names spoken aloud? Could I be the same Sydney now that the idea of a SHE in the Great Beyond has been introduced to my soul? Though I've never really thought of HER before, and never considered how a SHE Mother-Goddess might feel so different than the HE Father-God, I find the idea like a seed planted in fertile ground, growing wild and fast.

"Forget HER for the moment," Venus instructs. "SHE will not go away while you accomplish the task before you. Just put your mind on your new lover. Everything else will fall into place."

I open my mouth to object, to say that a quickie lover is of little interest next to the discovery of HER, but nothing comes out.

"Here," she says, popping a strawberry in my open mouth and handing me two more.

My mouth comes awake with the sweetness of the berry. I crush the ripe flesh between my teeth, roll my tongue around its juice.

Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

It feels so alive.

My throat opens fully, easily ready to receive what I swallow.

Did SHE do that with her heavy paw?

"It all begins with touch," Venus informs. "From here on out, everything—and I do mean everything—you touch, you must touch as though you were caressing your lover."

Her voice becomes silky seductive, full of innuendo. "So, what part of your new Adonis might those two strawberries in your hand remind you of?"

The shape and dimpled texture jump out at me. It takes me only a moment's imagination before I am feeling Steve's most private privates nestled in my hand. The idea shocks me. So much so, I drop both strawberries and nearly choke on the berry that was not quite finished its way down my throat. I cough so hard, Venus has to come to me and hit me square in the center of my back several times.

Though she's laughing her head off as she does so. "That has got to hurt," she says, bending to pick up the two fallen strawberries.

"Do you have to be so graphic?" I ask once I've caught my breath.

I mean, I can be as raunchy as any girl on a girls' night out. But in this context, with that image of what was slipping down my wide-open throat? She's getting downright pulpy.

"Whatever do you mean? Don't these lusciously curved strawberries remind you of your lover's deeply muscular back?"

She smiles, innocently coy. "Oh my! Were you thinking of something else? How crass!"

Again she laughs, knowing full well what it was I was thinking of. Hell, she probably put the thoughts there herself. She offers me two new, unbruised berries.

"Whatever you touch, think skin. Think male. In every move, in every gesture, but especially that which comes into your hands. A woman's hands have magic in them. She changes everything she touches. Hold anything as if you are holding the very life essence of your lover in your hands."