Not yet. She lifted her chin and smirked. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Oh, get over yourself!” declared Zoe from the side. “They’re just breasts. The lesser yin gates, and we massage them to open the energy flow.” She turned and looked to Nathan. “We’ve done this before, and it feels fantastic. I could really feel my energy clear.”
He nodded in approval because it was the truth. Zoe was doing well. “You don’t need to do it here,” he said to Tracy. “Just memorize the pattern.” He pointed at the first picture. “Circular strokes starting at the nipple then flowing outward to disperse the clogging energies.”
He glanced to the side where Zoe had already closed her eyes and begun stroking herself. Her fingers weren’t in the exact right position, but it seemed to be working. Her breath steadied, her shoulders straightened. And when he forced himself to attune to her surface energies, he felt that she was growing clearer as she worked.
“Very good,” he said. “Now slow your strokes to time with your breath. Exhale on the downstroke, inhale on the up.”
Zoe did as she was instructed while Tracy continued to stare. “Forty-nine circles,” he instructed. “Use the time to calm yourself. Afterward, reverse the direction. That will stimulate your yin.” Then he walked to his bookcase and pulled a primary text off the shelf. “If you need more explanation, you can borrow this book and try it in private.”
He extended the heavy paperback toward Tracy, but she didn’t take it. Instead, she continued to stare at him. “You really are serious,” she finally whispered. “You really think this can be real.”
“I have seen it. I know many who have reached the antechamber to heaven. We call it the Chamber of a Thousand Swinging Lanterns, and it is a place where orgasm becomes real, where ecstasy takes physical form.” He waited a moment for her response, but she just kept staring. “Imagine a moment when orgasm suffuses not only your belly, but your heart, your soul. Every sense ripples with ecstasy, even your breath trembles with awe.”
“Cool!” breathed Zoe from the side.
Tracy was shaking her head, denying everything including the book he now set in front of her. Except her left hand was trembling at the bottom of her shirt. Her body was betraying her, longing for something she couldn’t allow herself to believe in.
“Miss Williams…” he began. Then he dropped on his knees in front of her. “Tracy, listen to me.” If she allowed her mind to accept the possibility, then everything would go easier on her. It wouldn’t change the outcome—her spirit would force her to train no matter what her mind believed—but the transition would go much smoother if she opened herself to the possibility. “You know better than anyone that this is real. You felt it this afternoon in the hallway.” Her gaze snapped to his, showing fear and a trembling kind of panic.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stammered.
He extended his hand, but didn’t dare touch her. “I helped you clear your energy field. That is my talent. I helped you release that which confines you so you can see the truth beneath.”
It was more than he had ever told anyone outside the temple, and she roundly punished him for that trust. “That’s a load of crap and you know it!” she snapped.
He waited in silence, letting his field surround hers. His yang energy made his heart pound and his organ throb. How he wanted her! But he forced himself to remain still. In time, he was rewarded. Her shoulders dropped the tiniest bit.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “That was unfair. I did feel something this morning. I just don’t know what.”
“I understand. Fear pushes people to do many ugly things. Believe me, other students have said and done far worse than be rude.”
She blinked. “Should I even try to understand what you’re saying?”
He shook his head. “Just feel. Close your eyes.” To his delight, she obeyed, her long lashes slipping down to tremble against her cheeks. “I am going to touch your face,” he said. He could have taken her hands, but he wanted something more intimate. His fingers hovered just over her mouth, but then he changed his mind. She wouldn’t accept a touch there. Not yet.
Extending his fingers, he brushed lifting strokes along her left cheek. She gasped as he worked, and the sound was like a hot wind blowing through his mind. It heated his yang and made his dragon surge forward. But he kept his attention on her, on the sweet feel of her chi energy as it trembled against his hand.
Another brushing stroke along her cheekbone, then he feathered his fingers against her hair. She didn’t realize it, but her breath had begun to keep time with his touch: inhale with his caress, exhale as he reset. He started again, this time closer to her lips, stroking higher beside her eye and well into her hair.
His fifth stroke ended in a flick to push her ball cap off her forehead. Her eyelids fluttered so he quickly began speaking to distract her. “Do you feel the heat that builds where I touch you? That is my yang mixing with your yin. It creates heat. And passion.”
She swallowed. He caught the movement at the edge of his vision, and he looked down, pleased to see that her breasts had tightened. Her body was already responding, but what about her mind? He set his fingers at the edge of her mouth, slowing his stroke even more. “Do you feel yourself becoming more centered, more calm? My strokes are pushing away that which clutters your chi.”
He needed no words to strengthen his own energy. Just touching her tightened his yang to laser-point intensity. His whole body was trained on her whether he wished it so or not. Zoe slipped from his mind. The class and his plan regarding Tracy faded away, as well. All he knew was her and trying to merge his yang and her yin together. His internal fire was burning through his blood. Surely, she felt the same. It could not be this intense without both partners experiencing the flame.
“I am done throwing off your bad energies,” he said in desperation, though true practice required much more time. “We will raise your good energy now, your female yin. I will make it stronger and purer.” He was pushing her, moving too fast, but he couldn’t stop himself. He wanted to be with her now. He wanted to feel her body and her soul quivering along with him. She had the power of a true tigress, and he was helpless against it. And he had wanted her for months now.
He lengthened his finger stroke again to finally land on her mouth. He lightly touched her bottom lip, circling his index finger there for no reason except that he wanted to. He wanted to touch the rough edges of her chapped skin, to feel the smoother—wetter—skin farther in. And then, ever so slowly, he gently inserted his finger into her mouth.
Nathan felt the wet slide of her lips followed by the rough abrasion of her teeth. And then deep inside, he touched her tongue—a push and a pull with the pad of his finger. He felt her jaw tremble beneath his knuckle and the slow curl of her tongue around him.
Without warning, his yang energy boiled over. Hot and hard, it flowed. It arrowed straight at her and plunged deep into her spirit. The energy of his mind and his body thrust into her while her lips began to move. It was not a physical merging, and yet it felt just as real, just as intense.
She narrowed her mouth and began to suck. She pulled on his finger—an instinctive move as she took his energy—but it was the most perfect feeling he had ever had. Man gave, woman received. He was pouring himself into her in a pure and smooth current.
He shuddered with the power of it. But then the experience began to change. It was still sexually enthralling, and yet it also felt like falling. He knew that his body remained exactly where it was—on the floor of his apartment, kneeling across from Tracy. But he felt as if he were plunging deep into a dark well. His skin tightened and his chest collapsed. Every inhale slowed the descent for a brief second, but then his exhale dropped him exponentially faster. Down he went into her. He knew it consciously, but the reality—the experience—was so much more terrifying. He was losing himself in her. He felt as if his body would soon collapse into a tiny dot then disappear. He would be her—completely and totally. The sexual pleasure of it was divinely intense. He was going to die, and yet a part of him didn’t care.
Nathan gasped as he tried to slow the river of power—the flow of his energy from him into her. He fell backward, pulling himself away. It didn’t work. His power, his male essence, continued to pour into her.
He scrambled backward, only a tiny part of his mind controlling his body’s actions. The rest of him was still sinking into the divine pool that was Tracy. His hand slipped on the book he’d dropped before her and shot it across the floor. He flailed with his other hand, grabbing for an anchor—a table, a chair, a damn plastic spoon—anything to touch that wasn’t her. He found it in one of his accounting textbooks. A thick hardback of cold numbers. Nothing energy-related there. And certainly nothing wet or yielding or tantalizingly female. He slammed the pages open and directed all his attention to the neat columns of figures.
