The Tao of Sex Read online

  “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.

  And still he continued to fall. Though his eyes were trained on the figures—$12,400.00 for raw materials, $409.02 for office overhead—the better part of his mind still tumbled into her. Tracy was just now becoming aware of a change. He knew without looking that her eyes were fluttering open. She was probably dazed. Her skin would be flushed pink, her lips glossy and wet. She was so beautiful. So pure and strong…

  “Wow, Nathan, you don’t look so good.” Zoe’s words were like sandpaper across his mind. He hadn’t even remembered she was there. Her words were a harsh, scraping interruption and exactly what he needed. Tossing aside his accounting text, he focused completely on Zoe. Connect to Zoe!

  He couldn’t do it. All he could feel was Tracy. But the act of redirecting to someone else ended the freefall. He collapsed on the carpet, but he was no longer attached energetically to Tracy. He was free, and his whole body rebelled at the thought.

  “Are you all right?” Zoe asked.

  Nathan nodded, though it took an effort. He coughed, using the sound to release some of the confusion inside him. He had never felt such a strong bond with anyone before. Not so that he feared he was losing himself inside her. He tried to take stock of his body. He felt weak. So weak. And his pants were wet where…

  Embarrassment heated his face and he moved his arms in front of his lap. Then he steeled himself to turn back to Tracy without reestablishing the connection. As he’d expected, she was flushed pink, her mouth still slightly ajar, but her eyes were crystal clear. The dark black of her pupils had expanded, nearly drowning out the liquid brown of her irises. And in her expression he saw a raw black terror.

  He knew its source even if she didn’t. Her mind wasn’t ready to understand what had just happened. Her body had taken his energy. The tigress inside her had eaten his strength to fuel her own growth. Her spirit had needed power and so it had taken it from him.
/>   “T-Tracy. Miss Williams,” he stammered. “I know that was confusing but—”

  “Stop it!” She was on her feet, her legs obviously unsteady, but stronger than his at the moment. “Just stop it!” And with a final frightened glare at both him and Zoe, she spun on her heel and fled. He felt her every step as she pounded down the stairs. He had the strongest urge to run after her, but his legs were too weak, his mind too dazed. She had taken too much of his power. All he could do was stare at the closed door and breathe.

  “What was that all about?” Zoe asked, her tone grating against his nerves.

  His fingers dug into the carpet as the reality of his situation hit him hard. There was only one reason for that much power to pour suddenly and abruptly into someone’s body. Only one result from what he’d just done.

  Nathan pushed himself upright to settle unsteadily on his knees. It couldn’t be possible. He wasn’t that irresponsible. He wouldn’t do that to anyone, much less the woman threatening to make him homeless. But it had happened. Without his intention, he had poured all of his power into her. And now…His belly clenched with horror. What had he just done?

  “I woke her tigress,” he whispered.

  “Really? Awesome!” Zoe giggled. “Can you wake mine?”

  He barely had the energy to laugh. “You don’t understand. An uncontrolled—untrained—tigress can kill. It’s her female energy. It’s primal, it’s vital, and it’s awake.”

  Zoe frowned. “That’s bad?”

  “She hasn’t the foggiest idea what to do with it. It’s energy roiling around in her system, building and building until—”

  “Orgasms for days on end?”

  “No,” he snapped. “Heart attack. Aneurism. Hell, her leg could spasm while she’s driving and crash her into a tree. At the very least, she’ll become a nymphomaniac.”

  Zoe was silent for a long moment, then she dipped her head in a sage nod. “Bummer.”

  Chapter 4

  TRACY’S CELL PHONE went off as she was driving. She cursed at the ring tone, swerved around a drunken student who’d decided to cross in the middle of the street, and nearly plowed her truck into a tree. “Yeah?” she snapped.

  “Good evening to you, too, sis,” drawled her brother’s gravelly voice.

  Tracy smiled for the first time that evening. “Hey, Joey! Done studying? Need me to pick you up?”

  “Yes and no. Tommy’s dad is finishing their basement and needs help with the shelving. His mom said I could stay the night if me and Tommy do the heavy lifting. She’s even doing my laundry, so I got clothes. Copacetic?”

  “Tommy and I,” she corrected while disappointment weighted down her spirit. Still she kept her voice light. Joey didn’t need his older sister tying him down even if she really hated how they’d left things this morning. “And yeah, copacetic. Though I’d really like to talk more about—”

  “Cool. Bye!”

  She sighed. So much for communicating with her brother. She shut her cell and directed her attention back to the road. The raw, unsettled feeling she’d had all day was stronger now, quivering inside her like a living thing. She tried to ascribe it to the strange happenings with 4C—she didn’t even want to say his name—but she knew that she was fooling herself. Yeah, he had certainly exacerbated her problem. With his quiet intensity and silly stick-figure posters, he was…He was…

  Hell, she didn’t know what he was except that he bothered her. From the very beginning, he’d made her belly quiver and her breath skip. Why else would she start fantasizing about a tenant? But now it was so much worse. She couldn’t even think about him without her toes curling in…lust? Frustration? She couldn’t decide, and that bothered her even more. Perhaps she’d been fantasizing about him too much. She’d created a perfect man in her head and then wham, reality didn’t meet fantasy and she ended up confused and angry.

  Except, of course, reality was so much more interesting than fantasy. She’d lusted after a perfect man who catered to her every sexual whim. And wow, had she had sexual whims! Eight years worth! Then he’d walked into her apartment building, all exotic with rippling muscles and sleek black hair, and she’d had a living, breathing fantasy.

  Tracy blinked, startled by her train of thought and the sudden liquid heat down low. She was getting much too worked up about his physical body. What did she think of him? She knew that what she had experienced with him this morning and this evening had been beyond amazing. This morning, her skin had tingled and her breath had felt free, as if she had been breathing through a straw all her life and suddenly got to take a deep breath.

  But then she had gotten frightened and backed away. All that extra oxygen had gone to her head and freaked her out. Within moments, she had been back to her usual self but with one key difference: she remembered. She knew what it was like to take that full, deep breath and she wanted to do it again. She’d tried to block it from her mind, but couldn’t. So she had gone to his class. She had to know if she had imagined everything.

  It hadn’t been her imagination. Tonight’s experience had been beyond anything she thought possible. Not only had she breathed deeply again, but she had felt that air going to every part of her body. Every cell had popped awake. The tingling had been in her face, her arms, her core. Her womb had tingled, and if that wasn’t cause for freaking out, she didn’t know what was.

  She’d lost all sense of time and place. All she’d known was Mr. Nathan Gao and the sweet wonder of a body electrified inside and out. She might have orgasmed—she wasn’t even sure. It had been such a tiny piece of the overwhelming pleasure that she didn’t even know.

  So yes, it was real. And it all had come from Mr. Nathan Gao. So what had she done? Oh, her usual cut and run. She’d been so terrified of the experience, so overwhelmed by the sexual nature of it, that she had just bolted. Everything she’d felt was so far beyond reality that she’d had to choose: run screaming into the night or change everything she’d once believed was true. Obviously, she’d chosen option one: run screaming. But option two lingered in her thoughts. It had been real, right? She could experience it again, right?

  She was halfway down Michigan Street when it happened. She’d just passed the droopy maple where Joey had fallen and broken his arm when he was eleven. The normal-ness of the memory was futilely fighting with her other memory, of Mr. Gao, when both were obliterated by a bolt of lightning.

  Tszzzzz! It fried through her thoughts and her brain, making her hands spasm on the wheel. Her foot jerked, slamming on the pedal. Fortunately, she’d been slowing down, so the lightning made her jam her foot on the brake. The truck stopped with an ugly lurch, but her face didn’t. She slammed forward, her arms too numb from the lightning bolt to resist. Her face and jaw hit the steering wheel with bruising impact. She gasped, blinking as her vision flowed from stark white to black to semi-normal again.

  At least the air bag hadn’t deployed. In truth she hadn’t done anything but slam on the brakes for no reason at all, but she felt as if she’d just been in a ten-car pileup. Tracy sat there in the middle of the road, breathing deeply, feeling her jaw throb, and…

  Wow. She tingled all over. Serious tingling with a side of throbbing, and not just in her face. 4C zipped into her thoughts, and just like that, her breasts tightened, her belly quivered, and lower down…Wow. She seriously needed to get a grip. A zillion fireflies were zipping through her system, firing up the most inappropriate places.

  She took a deep breath, trying to settle her nerves. Unfortunately, that only rubbed her breasts against her shirt, setting off another firestorm of sensations. Jeez, what was that? It was like a lightning strike of the hornies.

  Mr. Gao was still in her thoughts, only now her imagination made him naked. She could see his rippling muscles as clear as day, lean and perfectly sculpted. Then the two of them were in his bedroom, and he was promising to do amazing, erotic things to her. It was just how she’d fantasized a zillion times. Except this time, she wasn’t in the privacy of
her bedroom, she was in her truck in the middle of the street! Without her wanting it, her breath shortened, her pelvis shifted on the seat, and the throbbing lower down deepened into a bass drum.

  No, no, no! Not here! Clenching her jaw, she mentally obliterated all thoughts of Mr. 4C. Whatever weird energy thing he’d done to her, she was in control of her body. She would not succumb to this…this echo of whatever. It was not real. And even if it felt real, it was just temporary. Lightning-bolt intense, but very, very temporary.

  Gripping the steering wheel, Tracy pressed down on the accelerator. Her truck leaped forward with an ominous grind. Fortunately, she wasn’t far from home. Minutes later, she pulled into her garage without any more throbbing. No less throbbing, but no new lightning strike of the hornies. She counted that as a win.

  Her legs were weirdly steady—energized even—as she bounded out of the truck and into the house. She reached to flip on the lights, but then remembered that Joey wasn’t sleeping here tonight. No need to give the place that welcome feel.

  She made it up the stairs quickly, slipped past her brother’s room, ignored as always the shut door of her parents’ old room, and careened into her own. Her nerves were zinging so much her hair felt as if it was standing on end. She banged on the overhead light only to curse and cut it off again.

  She didn’t want the harsh glare. She wanted muted half light and sexy saxophone music as she slid her clothing off. She bounced across the room and flipped on her bedside lamp. It was a silly pink thing surrounded by clowns. She’d had it from when she was a baby and rarely looked at it. But right then it gave her room the perfect soft glow.

  Then she focused on her pink eyelet curtains—another childhood leftover—and imagined herself in a lush boudoir stripping for a lover. 4C was just behind her, watching from her bed, his dark Chinese eyes drinking in her every move. He was naked except for those black cotton pants that rested ever so tantalizingly low over his hips, and he was waiting for her.