Chapter 4

After Zhenzhen and I finished the as usual delicious dinner, both angels and mortals came to welcome me back to the world, so to speak, after my second coma in as many days, this one a pointed attack by Simon.

Naomi, accompanied by Tash, seemed to be the last. I didn't think it had to do with coldness, which she could be, or reluctance that she delayed her welcome. I wanted her to be last, and she did too.

"Why," I asked her, after inviting the two to sit with us, "besides having Nick in your blood as much as Simon, are you different from Eva?"

"You mean Simon attacking me for my defiance?" she asked.

"Yes. I mean Eva has a barrier against Simon, but obviously you have the same thing when you want a bit of privacy from Nick. Obviously Simon can get past barriers."

"Until Xo helped, yes."

"But Xo hasn't helped Eva that way, has he?"

Eva shook her head.

"Perhaps I am the weakest of the angels," Naomi responded. "The weakest mind. I mean it took Nick forever to train me."

"I disagree completely," I said. "I think you are the strongest, except maybe Helen."

"Mei?" Zhenzhen offered.

"No sweetheart. Just like Salomé, she has never had to deal with such internal struggles. Fighting tends to toughen you up unless you give in. Stubbornness prevents surrender, doesn't it? In a way, that's what took Nick so long training you. You didn't want to submit, to pretend fondness, to play that game. Except it was a game, resisting Nick's intentions, as much fun for Nick as it was for you. And when you have your geniuses, when you choose ones that finally prove acceptable to your difficult and specific criteria, you put your whole heart into it."

"I keep making that mistake, since my first with my first lover," she pointed out, glancing at Kai and smiling when he caught her gaze and smiled.

"Really? Every one after tore a bit of your heart out when you had to separate?"

"No. They became my life when I became their muse. But the end never felt that forced. A sad but amicable ending. Maybe I do lose a bit of heart, just not as much as my first."

"The first made you careful. It also made you devoted. That's what the act of being a muse feels like for you. And leaving him might have been the most difficult compared to the others, but it modeled those endings as well didn't it? You just got better at it."

"His fiancé, so to speak."

"Exactly. And how did she feel about you in the end?"

"She ... empathized."

"She felt your sadness. She knew her fiancé would be a terrible sacrifice to lose."

"Husband by then, but yes. I think she felt sadder about my leaving them than her husband. That fucker," she laughed.

"So," I reminded her, "my first question still stands."

"I... ," she began but shook her head. "I was going to say I suck at barriers, but, when I'm loving my lover, I let nothing interfere, including Nick."

"But not Simon?"

"No. The asshole."

"Simon doesn't want to hurt me," said Eva. "Being his daughter, closest in flesh. When he warned me off with that terrible headache, I think he did so reluctantly and only out of necessity. When I stopped trying to pry into Seraphine's mind through him, and of course I had no clue what to do if I succeeded, he immediately withdrew the pain. Well not immediately, but soon after.

"You have to understand, Joe, that I was my father's disciple. I learned what he taught me. I did what he asked of me. No matter how disgusting. No matter how abusive it might have ended up being. There might have been some regret, but I didn't let it bother me. In fact I could be quite cruel about it. Made fun of them. Laughed at the whole situation, the more disgusting the funnier. Simon loved that. It delighted him. I delighted him, which in turn added to my delight.

"He had one fatal flaw in training his angels, Joe. You found it. You and Helena, and then Zhen."

"Love," I said.

"For anyone besides him," Eva added. "I think that's why Gia made such an easy transition. He was ambivalent about her loving him. She was a cold tool for him, and had the wrong features as well. And Naomi chose the one who loved others besides himself and she obviously did too. And Helen..."

"Liked Simon's arrogance," I filled in.

"Until she didn't," Eva shrugged. We shrugged along with her, at least internally. Helen would always be a puzzle.

But Helena added, "I think, after millennia, she's found someone she loves, who loves her back without that annoying adoration."

"Shit," I said, making my lovers laugh, which included all the lovely ladies at the table. "I may be a stud, but I'm not a love god."

"But you are, my love," Helena pronounced. "Physically and emotionally. You attract it and sustain it, whether you intend it or not. You may even last as long as a god." When the other ladies laughed, she shook her head. "Such dirty minds. I meant him being immortal."

"Joe's here," Zhenzhen argued. "What else would we think about?"

"True," said Helena.

"Ugh," I grunted. More laughter, or the laughter rose higher.

"Everybody ready for my Tales?" asked Nick, settling into his usual chair on the stage. The ex-Ambassador snuggled into him and kissed him before vacating his lap and taking a seat in front of him.

I held back Tash from following Naomi. "You okay?" I asked her.

"I like Kai. He makes Naomi happy. And he has a nick cock."

"Good to hear," I laughed with her. She headed back to the table containing Rosa, Miwa and Kai. I looked for his twin brother and found him sitting intimately close to Vance at another table. Beside Vance sat Hannah and Shira with Stan between them. I caught Shira's eye. She gestured towards her tablemates. She smiled when I nodded.

"We want you tonight," said Helena.

"I'll let her know later," I said. "She may even expect it with what happened today. Noon horniness seems to be our time to make love anyway."

"You done?" asked Nick.

I didn't even feel embarrassed. "Yes professor," I said.

Taking the role, he asked, "Care to share with the rest of the class."

"Actually I would."

"Too bad." He let the laughter fade like any good actor before beginning. "Buddhism became less relevant to me after my sweet angel's death, even if I continued proselytizing for it. Aspects became less relevant. I never accepted reincarnation, even if, or because I feigned it. Besides, it couldn't happen to me. Or maybe it could." He shrugged off the implication and continued.

"Time to go," says Nick sadly at his angel's funeral.

"I know," Betty responds.

"I want you to head north, to the lands Salomé and I traversed before we came here. See what my minions are up to, and give them advice."

"A future angel?"

"Not for a while. Spend perhaps decades there before returning to Britain. For me, I want to keep heading east, to keep proselytizing, to see, the way Hindu Dharma and Buddha's Dharma meshed, how we can mesh some of the gods and philosophies with Buddha's philosophy. We made quite a lot of inroads. I plan to bring children of mixed races, Indian and Asian, with me to sort of symbolize the possible unity which can be found."

"Then you want me to head to Africa?" asks Salomé.

"Yes."

"It has been many years."

"Over a century I think."

"I think so too. I'd like that."

"I thought you might."

"When would you like us back with you, Grandfather?" Betty asks. "When you change skins? When a new angel becomes conceived?"

"I think both may come soon. Perhaps an angel will take several generations, but I believe I will appear to be like the people of the East once I have returned to that area. I look forward to it. I sense an old, sophisticated culture from which the people we have encountered are at the periphery and thus not quite as sophisticated as might be found at its origin. I think it may be even older than the Mesopotamians, and perhaps even more civilized. There's a wisdom and calm to these people despite the usual tribal disputes. I think it will only get easier bringing them Buddha's philosophy."

"Sounds like what happened when you became what you are now," Salomé reasons. "Your lovely looks made it easy for you to become a central figure for these people, being a reincarnation of Krishna. And as such, I think it excited Buddha to bring you into his Dharma, the shift from Krishna's to his, very much like his own transformation."

"I agree, and in a way looking like the eastern people will help the assimilation and the proselytizing. But at the same time, it is completely different, because here I could go to the source, both in terms of the most powerful Hindi temples and actually meeting the Buddha. Origination became easy to find. I don't think finding the source of these peoples' origins, whether it be philosophical, cultural or even racial will be easy. It will be like looking for the path they took away from more civilized society which has become overgrown and deeply hidden."

"I don't understand," Salomé responds. "They must have stories of ancestors, their exodus, where and why."

"Those that represent the mystical side, priests or shamans, almost always adjust to their surroundings. Spirits or gods of the river might have originated with another river, but it has become their local river which contains that spirit. I had no problem with that, with Hindu's open mindedness and just the experience of meditation making peace with oneself, they could be as receptive as anyone. But the smartest of the eastern people, the intellectuals if you will, who might have kept their history alive just to be broader in mind than those whose concerns remain mundane if nothing else, while being more enthusiastic than any of them in exploring meditation and seeking enlightenment and Nirvana, never deigned to exchange their ideas with mine, at least in terms of history or origination."

"Interesting."

"Even more, when I became insistent, they always sent me to places where I found the opposite of what they told me I would. Instead of some old wise man full of historic tales, I would find villages of the simplest people, either dedicated exclusively to the hard work of farming or fishing, or of a more primitive nature, isolated bands living hand to mouth, as unsophisticated as people can be. Reminded me of those small bands of people we encountered in the African jungles. While that might be interesting in its own way, looking at the very beginning of man, just like those Africans, they had their own unique language, and, probably wisely, mistrusted strangers."

"They aim you in the wrong direction."

"Exactly. Makes me want to go the exact opposite way."

"These smart ones, do they know who you really are?"

"If they were looking for such a being, I suppose. My trading for sex or for women to accompany us. Even my lack of scrapes and scratches or insect bites."

"There's another one of you, or of Simon, staying of the Eastern race just as Simon stays white."

"Very good Salomé. At least it seems as if he's avoiding me rather than attempting to destroy me."

"That's good. You want to meet him."

"I do. But he obviously has no interest in meeting me."

"And yet, what you brought, the Buddha's Dharma, he seems interested."

"A good thing to want, for a peaceful soul."

"Or one who craves such peace."

"Yes. Perhaps he and his people seek to conquer, to make people his and to spread his influence through violence. Like Simon. A righteous agenda. But different. He wants to learn from me and not just try to lop off my head."

The small entourage heading east with Nick consists exclusively of his minions, mostly second or third generation offspring from his loins. One exception, his son Ravi, Sita's surrogate son, born of the stuck up aristocrat who ends up becoming Sita's best friend, inevitably joins them. Not just his respect bordering on devotion he feels for his father, but his inseparable relationship with his best friend since infancy who becomes his soulmate when the two mature into sexual beings and physical connection joins spiritual and conversational connections makes it inevitable. Sophana, born of one of the two sons who have joined Nick in his travels east, and a most loved Asian woman, having been sickly and near death as an infant, has been sent to India to be cured by Nick, and easily squirms her way into the heart of both Nick and Sita, becoming a surrogate daughter for the needy mortal angel. Two neighboring cradles become a shared bed which the youngsters demand remain shared, along with their baths, even when sexual awareness arouses Sophana first, and makes Ravi a precocious student of it through Sophana's insatiable curiosity. So Sophana, returning to a mother and father she has never known, bringing her charisma and devotion to the Buddha's teachings to aid in Nick's missionary intentions, must necessarily have her soulmate as company.

Along with those two are other mixed bloods, Asians and Indians, mostly women, who have come to India to get further educated in the ways of the Buddha. Two men and five women to be precise. Four other men, making the genders equal in number, have been chosen by Salomé, being favorite warriors as well as lovers.

The importance of the equality of gender in numbers (and in fact in status) stems from their sexual appetite. They are a randy bunch. Even the devoted lovers share their bed with others, both men and women. From the beginning, they pair up and flirt. Cold travel in the mountains leads to even colder nights where embracing counteracts the worst of it. Even Nick finds warmth in the two youngest women, mixed bloods begetting them, but not as incestuous as one might think. Only one parent conceived by one brother, the other of a group at the edge of the Eastern area, where race begins to change to Asian, and the looks of these people show a long history of intermingling, long in the sense that memory forgets it happening, but their looks make it clear it must have. At some point Asian met Indian and created a very attractive people, longer and leaner in face and body from most Asians, and yet, whether it be the less dark skin or thicker hair or the eyes, not quite as hooded but with similar shape and with a deeper brown color, their Asian features win out over the Indian. Even in these two young beauties, whose features look even less Asian, in the end, they somehow look to be more Asian than Indian.

"Nick," one of the young beauties murmurs tentatively, standing close to his lean-to, as usual at the edge of the camp.

"Come here," Nick exclaims.

"Told you so," the other beauty giggles. Though cousins, the two brothers who conceived them had vastly different mates, even the women shared Nick's blood a generation at least before. The difference in blood shows in their faces and bodies. One has a sexy plumpness, while the other has a lithe sexiness. But in ways other than blood, they may as well be sisters, or even twins, since they are nearly the same age.

"Hoping for some fun like the others?" Nick grins.

"Yes!" they both exclaim.

"Then let me warm you." He pulls back the thick woolen blanket to reveal his nakedness. They swiftly crawl beneath so as not to discomfort their most desired man. The plump one heads high, gaining her first kiss from the opposite gender. The lithe one goes low, wanting to study his erection. He helps the plump one out of her clothes while kissing and caressing her, the more revealed, the lower the caresses, while the explorer shucks off her own clothing. He enjoys the firmness of youth in the heavy breasts and ass, while also enjoying the tentative hand rubs and licks, kisses and sucks of the other on his cock.

"Place the cock head at your cousin's pussy," Nick groans.

"We're virgins," the slim one admits.

"I suspected," Nick explains. "This will help." She does as ordered, and he tells her, "Lap up the excess and bring it to your cousins mouth.

He explodes with a plentitude of semen, shooting just inside the pussy, most of it leaking out the sides. The cousin brings her mouthful to her cousin. They kiss and share, obviously not strangers to the pressing of lips together.

"Good. Now back to work," he chuckles. The lean one turns around and attacks his half hard penis with greater gusto than before. He'll tell her later all other men need moments of recovery after cumming, it being too sensitive. For future reference. After a couple minutes, he's fully hard again. Without instruction, she returns it to her cousin's entrance. He pulls the plump one's butt down, sending his cock deep, destroying her maidenhead.

"Oh," the plump beauty mutters, her face surprised, ending the kiss.

"Hurt?" he asks her.

"A little."

"Believe me, it could have been worse," he smiles. "Now kiss me some more. When you're ready, move your hips."

Not long after, she moves, and he quickly takes charge thrusting slowly upwards. Her body insists on faster and harder and he complies. Her mouth separates from his as she gasps, lifting her torso to perpendicular to him and riding him. Taking a moment to enjoy her bobbing tits, fondling them, he commands her cousin to straddle his mouth. "Suck her tits for me," he orders, "and rub the top of her pussy."

Riding him hard and fast, with her cousin aiding her pleasure, the plump young beauty finds her first orgasm intense. She stiffens when it happens, ending her part of the fuck, but he keeps thrusting just as hard as before up into her. She soon takes over, until another orgasm arrives and another. The last has her shivering and squealing and passing out when his cock throbs and squirts potent semen into her depths.

"Should I revive him again?" asks the lithe one, who surprises him by not cumming from his most able oral attention. He has just rolled her cousin onto her side, his limp and wet penis slipping out.

"No," he tells her. "Kiss me."

Before she does, straddling him like her cousin, she gazes lovingly into his eyes. He returns the sentiment, stroking her long, pretty face. She strokes his and sniffles. "I love you," she confesses.

Smiling, he returns the sentiment which makes her smile, completing her beauty. When they kiss, they communicate that love. So much deeper than her cousin's kisses, he realizes their difference. Her cousin getting fucked first reveals her to be the sensualist, the one who will always enjoy a good fuck from an acceptable partner. Kissing is a contrivance, expected of a much shallower mind full of silly, superficial romance stories, leading to the hoped for conclusion of physical pleasure, of getting well fucked, of cumming on a man's cock, hoping it lasts as long as possible even if the peak moment, of his spurting, becomes the triumphant and ecstatic ending.

The lithe beauty has a deeper agenda. Sex alone never brings her to ecstasy. She needs emotional passion to propel her there. By heading directly to Nick's cock, she prepares him for her cousin's more immediate needs. Once fulfilled, she has him for herself, and the time to make love to her favorite man. Not at all selfish or even intentional, she has enabled her cousin to get what she wants, immediate and intense gratification, while she waits to gain her preferred one, delayed, gradual, and deeply heartfelt.

And so they make love, touching each other in wonder. A communication beyond words, the essence of which has already been communicated. She does find herself sucking him to completion again. She studies his reactions devotedly and learns. His fluid essence propels her close to her own first orgasm. His oral attention this time produces the expected result, reciprocating her attention while she readies him for the first entrance of a man inside her pussy. But her explosion arises as much from her appreciation of him making love to her with mouth and fingers, as it does his expertise or the effect of his cum, the latter only adding an exclamation to it, elevating the orgasm to the utterly ecstatic.

When she readies him again despite being enthralled by her first orgasm, she rolls onto her back and opens herself to him. Again their eyes express love before their mouths take over and Nick places his cock at the entrance to her narrow virgin chamber, more than ready for it, and pushes through the seal with one relentless thrust. "Oof," her only real reaction, the sound muffled by his mouth, and immediately she shifts beneath him, letting him know it hasn't dimmed her pleasure.

And just as her lithe cousin helps the plump one experience her first and most amazing experience with fucking, the young woman, waking from her stupor, assists the lovemaking beside her. As the lovers embrace each other, from lips to arms to legs and most particularly to the tight embrace of pussy around cock, slowly moving and exalting in the nuances of every movement, she slides a hand between them to work on her cousin's nipples, while her other hand brings fingers to press and caress her cousin's clit. This elicits the lithe beauty's first orgasm via sexual intercourse.

Many more follow, building ever stronger as Nick's thrusts build in strength and speed. It's as if he is carrying her to the land of pure bliss. It's as if he is flying her there on a carpet of ecstasy. When she finally arrives at that great height, and he fills her with his own proof of it, senses explode into a thousand pieces, each enrapt in pieces of him.

Nick has found his companions. Two this time. One loving and deep, adoring his heart. The other playful and light, adoring his cock. Sisters in all but blood, they also adore each other.

The travelers celebrate getting past the mountains onto easier and warmer climes with an orgy. Ravi and Sophana pull Nick from it. "Go ahead and have fun," he tells his young companions.

The threesome walks away from the others far enough to gain some privacy. As soon as they can't be seen, Sophana lies down and pulls Nick down with her. "Make me pregnant," she tells him.

"Ravi hasn't put seed into your womb?"

"We've been waiting for this," Ravi explains. "We've played and have gotten close and very tempted, but Sophana wanted it to be your child first."

"And you?" Nick asks him.

"I always defer to her."

"Wise man," Nick chuckles. "Where are you going?"

"To give you privacy."

"Is he joining the orgy?" Nick asks Sophana.

"I hope not. We've played with others, but always together."

"Then why not now?"

"But..." Ravi stutters.

"Stay and watch, my son. And learn what pleases your mate."

"I wish to learn how to pleasure Ravi with your help," Sophana says as she shifts to sitting and presses Nick to lie down. Freeing his penis, its looseness disappoints her.

"Best to start there," Nick chuckles. "It will often be between times, when his cock has loosed his seed. Show me your breasts, my dear. I'm certain they will impress me and my cock.

She does, and they indeed are impressive. A little more than a handful, they hang firm and round upon her chest, dark nipples jutting forward surrounded by a small dark ring. The areola gets subtly bumpy and the nipples stiffen and lengthen in the cool air.

"Very nice," Nick praises them.

Sophana can see the physical proof of it as Nick begins to harden. She grasps below the skin covered head and pulls.

"Good," Nick murmurs, his fingers teasing her nipples.

She continues to pull and begins to stroke when he becomes half hard. Leaning forward, her lips engulf his glans and her tongue sweeps around it.

"Very good," he moans. "Rub lower with your hand on my shaft. A little harder. You can gently play with my balls. Squish them, but tenderly. Use your lips like you used your hand before. Don't forget the tongue. Watch the teeth."

"Sorry."

"Not a problem. I actually like the shock of it, but Ravi won't, so best not to."

Her nod thrills him, especially with her tongue becoming more active. Not long after, he fills her mouth with cum. "Keep going," he tells her, pulling her over him and removing any barrier to her pussy.

While bringing her pleasure, fingers continuing the efforts of his mouth when he pauses it to explain things, he instructs Ravi in the art of cunnilingus. By the time she cums on his mouth, he is fully hard. He scoots his body around beneath her, positioning her to fall bravely upon his spear. She does swiftly, finding being opened up intense and remarkably pleasurable, the removal of the skin barrier barely a twinge. She immediately bounces on top of him, moving forward a little to find even more pleasure. Seized by orgasm, she collapses onto his torso. His hands grasp her hips and pull her harder against him as he lets loose a stream of semen carrying an army of very capable sperm, only one needing success in their campaign.

"Should I lie on my back to keep your seed from escaping?" she asks him quietly.

"If you wish, but it's probably not necessary."

She nods and he keeps his hold on her while they roll over. He begins a slow, shallow fucking, the last vestiges of her shuddering interior adding to his remarkably swift recovery. Fingers fondle her nipple, his mouth the other while a thumb rubs at her clit. His strokes lengthen and become harder, the motion a match for his cock's, fully erecting. He continues slowly, almost a tease, because she has already revealed her preference for hard and fast. And it does build her towards her biggest orgasm of all. The quickening of his thrusts edge her closer and closer. When he finally gives her what she needs, pounding into her with abandon, he twists a nipple and bites the other, and his thumb rubs harder, pressing into her rigid clit. She screams his name with a last breath, her entire body tightening and shaking, her pussy's interior expansions and contractions rolling across his cock, milking it, pulling his semen once more into her depths to flood her womb with his fecund seed.

Nick eases out of her inert body, his penis flaccid, used up, well used. "Lay upon her," he tells his son. "Let her see you when she awakes. Tell her my seed has succeeded and she can let you cum into her as she has always wished."

"Thank you, Father," his son murmurs, quickly ridding himself of clothing, revealing his respectable hard-on.

Nick laughs. "A true honor, Son. She's a remarkable woman."

"I know," Ravi replies, resting his body over his beloved, unable to resist sliding the shaft of his cock across her clit, back and forth, gently. He kisses her.

"Ravi!" she murmurs loudly, her weakened arms somehow embracing him. They kiss with the intensity of their love, long and full of tongue dancing against tongue. "Fuck me," she finally murmurs, her hand reaching down to place his cock where she needs it. "Push in and be gentle. For now." They laugh.

"Gods," he moans.

"Feels good?"

"Like heaven."

"Me too."

No more conversation, they kiss again and fuck. Nick leaves them to it, gathering his clothes and walking naked to the orgy, the cool air cooling his hot body.

In the morning, the entourage, truly spent, wake to a disturbing sight. Men surround them, carrying spears. At least none pointed at them. "Relax," Nick chuckles. "They are friends. Perhaps you might get dressed though."

The warriors enjoy the sight of the naked ladies becoming clothed. They joke about it.

Sophana smiles, and then frowns, scolding them in their tongue, literally her mother tongue. The smile wins out, though.

"Sophana, come with me," says Nick. Unlike the others she and Ravi have their underclothes on. She puts on her outer layer of clothing and follows Nick and an older, regal looking warrior. They sit several feet away from the camp.

"Princess," the warrior bows his head.

"I am?"

"Your mother was always humble," Nick explains. "She actually enjoyed being my submissive servant."

"And Mamasita's," Sophana sniffles. Two of the three women she considers her mothers have died within months of each other, her actual mother first.

"No. Your mother was never a servant to Sitara. Their love for each other made them equals. Now you must listen to your cousin and make a choice."

"My warriors and I," their sort of officer tells her, "have come far to meet you. We are in dangerous parts, and when we return home, we remain in danger. Our journey home will not be easy. We are best at what we do, as scouts and as warriors. We can keep away from enemy eyes, and you and Nick's group can, too, if they do as I ask. If we are unlucky, and meet with a small contingent of these rather savage people, we must kill them all so that none can tell of our presence. I have an understanding," he taps his forehead, "which I am somewhat baffled about. My cousin, who presently leads our people while our king suffers what will probably be his last illness, is more certain of it. Somehow I knew of your journey, and your need for me, and my cousin insisted I do as I felt compelled to do, even if it meant losing our most capable scouts to do so. And in the same way, I understand Nick is a formidable warrior, as are most of the men amongst you."