The Best Sauce

"While I live, you'll serve me just as I've said: in all ways, without reservation or protest. You'll dress as I do, work alongside me by day, and perform the rituals with me at night. You'll learn the ways of desire regnant and the ways it must be propitiated. When I'm gone -- not too soon, I hope -- you'll do as I have done: counsel young women, teach them to find the desire within themselves and their mates, help them to excite it to its fullest pitch, and then set it free.

"Women are the keepers of desire. Men's lusts are crude things, necessary, but entirely of the body, with no fineness and no persistence once the needs of their gonads have been met. It's women's job to learn true eroticism, the techniques of ardor and bonding, and to wield them for all the human race. Without these things, neither families nor society can endure.

"There was a time when the knowledge was passed from mother to daughter like a family heirloom. Every woman came to her maturity as a courtesan-priestess. But today, because of some highly unfortunate notions that have gotten into circulation, a tragic fraction of them are without anyone to teach them, so it falls to us." Helen smiled. "All the same, it's very pleasant work."

She rose from the edge of the bed and stood looking directly down at Martine. "Do you want it, dear?"

Martine closed her eyes and let the pounding of her blood echo within her.

"On one condition."

Helen raised an eyebrow.

"We make love. Now."

Without a word, Helen unbuttoned her silk blouse and shrugged it away. She kicked off her high-heeled pumps, unzipped her miniskirt and let it slide to the floor as well. A moment later her knees straddled Martine's torso. Her perfectly depilated mons glistened a few inches above Martine's face.

"That, my dear, is the ordination rite."

One pair of lips descended to meet the other.