{"id":275,"date":"2015-12-20T22:45:18","date_gmt":"2015-12-21T03:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/?page_id=275"},"modified":"2015-12-20T22:45:18","modified_gmt":"2015-12-21T03:45:18","slug":"like-a-myth-edited-by-cecilia-tan","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/?page_id=275","title":{"rendered":"Like A Myth edited by Cecilia Tan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>ebook $3.99
\nISBN 9781885865779
\n27,117 words<\/span><\/p>\n

[wp_eStore_add_to_cart id=123]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(also available on Amazon<\/a>, Barnes&Noble<\/a>, and AllRomanceEbooks)<\/a><\/p>\n

Four erotic tales featuring folkloric settings of India, Japan, Korea, and a fantastic orient that never was.<\/p>\n

Table of Contents:
\n<\/b>Tara is Compassion; Tara is Play<\/em> by Teresa Noelle Roberts
\nMud Licker<\/em> by Elizabeth Black
\nOne Thousand <\/em>by Andrea Dale
\nThe Sultan\u2019s Savage<\/em> by Argus Marks<\/p>\n

Read an excerpt from Tara is Compassion; Tara is Play:<\/b><\/p>\n

by Teresa Noelle Roberts<\/i><\/p>\n

Tara could remember every mortal who had ever called upon her for aid. Yet, at the same time, they blurred together. Encompassing the infinite as she did, understanding that the individual and the universe were equally real and equally illusionary were, in fact, basically the same thing. Her memory was both sharper and more diffuse than it had been during her human lives. It was a blessing and a curse of being a bodhisattva.<\/p>\n

Yet some humans still stood out: a girl of ten who understood, as many adults did not, that in calling upon Tara to help her help her laboring mother, she was really calling upon wisdom hidden in her own soul; an illiterate yak-herder with a grasp of Buddha-nature that most monks and nuns and yogis never attain; a judge who asked, every day before his work began, for the ability to balance justice and compassion.<\/p>\n

And then there was Lobsang.<\/p>\n

Lobsang had come to her attention when he was an orphan boy living in a monastery outside a tiny Tibetan village. He was the one who comforted the younger children when they wept for their dead parents or cried out in the night in fear of demons, the one who rescued baby birds and orphaned animals, to the monks\u2019 amused consternation. Of course, like all small boys, he had moments of being a brat, but that endeared him to her as well. Tara\u2019s playful side liked that his pranks were silly but never malicious and sometimes tweaked the stuffier monks into relaxing and laughing with him.<\/p>\n

So she watched Lobsang as he grew into a handsome youth, serene yet merry, watched him as he shaved his head and took his vows, watched him as he grew into a man who fed the hungry and healed the sick and meditated daily that all beings might find peace.<\/p>\n

A man with a heart full of love and laughter.<\/p>\n

And yet a man who never had been loved, not in the sense most men, even most monks, hungered to be loved.<\/p>\n

Handsome Lobsang was still a virgin in his late twenties, for he had taken his final vows young and his order was a celibate one, not one of the Tantric orders that strove to understand divine union through erotic bliss. Lobsang was not so innocent that he didn\u2019t notice women\u2019s appreciative glances and flirtatious smiles in the marketplace. He\u2019d even smile back, although always while walking determinedly away. But he was innocent enough that on the rare occasions he let himself speculate in a naughty way about the young widow who grinned a little too brightly and chatted a bit too eagerly while putting dumplings in his begging bowl. Even the pretty girl who kept bringing her little brother to visit him when it was clearly she, not the lad, who wanted his attention. The vague fantasies were from a young boy.<\/p>\n

Fantasies vaguer than most young boys, in fact. A child raised by his parents in a farmer\u2019s cramped home would have woken in the night at some point and seen his parents making love.<\/p>\n

Unlike that young boy, who would relish his misty erotic dreams and the way they made his cock swell and the pleasure he could make burst from his cock in secret, poor Lobsang tried mightily to resist the urges of his body. And when he failed, he would pray for strength to resist such temptations in future. Women, he thought, were a danger to his quest for enlightenment. Through no fault of their own, they were deliciously distracting and the path he was on had no place on it for such distractions.<\/p>\n

And Tara, who could see where human rules were useful and when they were foolish, found that sad.<\/p>\n

When the Buddha said that that desire was the cause of suffering, he hadn\u2019t meant it that way! Erotic desire and love could cause you pain, it was true\u2014she\u2019d learned that in her various human lives\u2014but they could also shatter the illusion that all beings were separate in a way that no amount of meditation could. Lobsang\u2019s unfulfilled desire was doing him far more harm than a sexy romp with some willing woman possibly could, and his frustration, and the self-loathing it brought on, hurt her, for she loved Lobsang a little more than she loved all her mortal charges.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d been a human woman in many lives, after all, and the part of her that was still human had a weakness for a handsome man.<\/p>\n

But Tara couldn\u2019t intervene. Always ready to spring into action on a human\u2019s behalf when she was called upon, she couldn\u2019t meddle until a human recognized a problem and asked for her help. Bodhisattvas had almost unlimited power to assist mortals, but humans, tangled in illusion and suffering, weren\u2019t always ready to receive it. They needed to untangle themselves far enough to know they were in trouble before she could be of any use.<\/p>\n

Tara, divine herself, found herself praying that Lobsang would either call upon her aid or learn to relax.<\/p>\n

And finally her prayers were answered, if not in the way she\u2019d imagined.<\/p>\n

Merciful Tara,<\/i> Lobsang\u2019s prayer reached her one day when spring was just arriving in his part of Tibet. Help me find compassion for my brother Tenzin. He\u2019s leaving the monastery because he\u2019s fallen in love. I think he\u2019s making a terrible mistake, but being angry with him hurts us both and he needs to find his own destiny. Help me find it in my heart to wish him well.<\/i><\/p>\n

Even though Lobsang had years of practice in meditation and stilling the mind, Tara could sense the emotions roiling behind his prayer: anger, sorrow for what he perceived as his friend\u2019s failing, envy, and, mingled with it all, the red heat of desire. Tenzin had apparently told Lobsang a few earthly, sweaty, reasons why a farmer\u2019s tough life sounded more appealing, with a cuddly and loving wife to warm his nights, than remaining in the monastery.<\/p>\n

She reached out to Lobsang, touching his consciousness with hers, and even in the incorporeal form she assumed when not in the mortal realm, lust seared through her. Remembered nipples perked up. Skin she wasn\u2019t wearing shivered as if a man\u2019s hand, gentle yet passionate, stroked her. And a yoni that she hadn\u2019t considered in years, perhaps centuries, moistened and throbbed and clenched with need.<\/p>\n

Her poor monk burned for pleasures he\u2019d never known. His confused lust and his envy of his bolder friend were leading him away from loving kindness, towards jealousy, anger, and any number of other enemies of enlightenment or even contentment.<\/p>\n

That made it Tara\u2019s department.<\/p>\n

Hoping to soothe his mind and heart, Lobsang had made his way to an isolated hut that the monks sometimes used when they needed solitude. It was cold and barren of any furnishings. the remains of bright paint flaking off the walls. The entire smelled of mouse pee and stale smoke from dung fires. But, sitting in the doorway, one could look to one side and see the sun illuminating the roof of the monastery, or look to the other side and see the moon rising between distant mountain peaks. A stream burbled and danced down the mountainside next to the little hut and colorful prayer flags danced in the breeze.<\/p>\n

It was a peaceful view, conducive to meditation. However, when Tara materialized there, Lobsang wasn\u2019t meditating.<\/p>\n

He was pacing back and forth in what might pass for walking meditation if it weren\u2019t for his tense, tight shoulders and jerky steps.<\/p>\n

Tara\u2019s preternatural hearing picked up that the words he muttered weren\u2019t a mantra. At least not a mantra a devout man like Lobsang would use under normal circumstances. More what a cranky farmer might spew to motivate himself through spreading dung on his field on a cold, raw, drizzly day: a string of \u201cfucks\u201c interspersed with the occasional \u201cJust calm down and let Tenzin make his own mistakes.\u201c<\/p>\n

The advice was obviously not working.<\/p>\n

The aspect of Tara that was female and almost human couldn\u2019t help noticing his temper, unfortunate though it was, brought a fine, high color to his face that made him even more handsome. She hesitated, staying invisible to watch him just a little longer.<\/p>\n

And was rewarded by him stopping in his tracks, and unwrapping his deep red robes to display a slim but muscular body and a hard, throbbing lingam.<\/p>\n

He began to stroke angrily, cursing under his breath.<\/p>\n

Over the millennia of her existence, Tara had seen countless male bodies, old and young, healthy and sick. She had taken joy in them all, for to the enlightened, all beings were beautiful in their own right and almost anything could be a source of joy<\/p>\n

Lobsang, though, seemed a little more beautiful to her than most beings.<\/p>\n

But the way he was treating his poor member made her cringe; it looked more like he was trying to tear it off altogether than to give himself pleasure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat will never do, dear one,\u201c Tara said, manifesting in her favorite physical form: an attractive, smiling young woman, full-breasted and round-hipped, old enough for lovemaking, but young enough that she might break into girlish giggles at any second. Today she chose to be tinged with green. Humans prayed to \u201cGreen Tara\u201c to remove obstacles, and while such titles made little difference to her\u2014she\u2019d answer mortal prayers no matter what image they used to invoke her. Even if it was some strange, pale-haired goddess from the other side of the world, it might get the point that his fears were an obstacle across to Lobsang.<\/p>\n

Certainly the fact she was mostly naked would get some<\/i> point across.<\/p>\n

For a second, Lobsang stared, hand frozen on his cock, awe and fear and frank lust warring on his face. Then he tore his hand away, prostrated himself on the muddy ground, muttering something panic-stricken and incoherent. Something, she thought, about forgiveness.<\/p>\n

\u201cSilly beloved one,\u201c she said, gliding forward to him, \u201ctake my hand.\u201c<\/p>\n

His body trembling, Lobsang knelt up and obeyed.<\/p>\n

With strength the body she was wearing should not have possessed, Tara drew the young monk to his feet and from there into the circle of her arms.<\/p>\n

She kissed him like she knew he\u2019d never been kissed.<\/p>\n

First like any woman might kiss a shy suitor, tender but ardent, coaxing his passion until his breath came short and his body couldn\u2019t help pressing harder against hers.<\/p>\n

Next like a yogini wise in the ways of secret Tantra might kiss her partner, breathing a bit of her spirit into him, breathing a bit of his spirit into her until their essences started to mingle.<\/p>\n

Instinctively his hips canted toward her, pushing his wood-hard lingam against her. She eased her stance so it could slip between her legs and glide over nether lips already glazing with moisture.<\/p>\n

He made a noise that was half arousal, half terror, and jumped as if he wanted to pull away but couldn\u2019t. Or, which seemed more likely, as if he didn\u2019t want to pull away but felt he must.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no fear,\u201c she said, speaking directly into his heart so she could keep kissing him. \u201cThere is only love.\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cBut\u2026\u201c He spoke into her mouth, and the words were muffled, but she could feel confusion and doubt swirling in his soul, just as keenly as she felt his cock moving convulsively, unthinking, over the opening of her yoni and teasing at the pearl that was the center of a woman\u2019s ecstasy.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpen to me,\u201c she said to Lobsang\u2019s heart, \u201cas I will open to you.\u201c Now she kissed him like a bodhisattva. Kissed him like Tara who removed obstacles and smashed illusion and opened the heart to compassion and enlightenment and joy.<\/p>\n

He still tried to resist, but no man could resist that, except maybe one not inclined toward the female at all.<\/p>\n

Something hard and proud cracked inside Lobsang, and Tara felt it let go.<\/p>\n

His eyes opened wide, like a man who could see through the veils of time and space to grasp, for an elusive second, the wholeness of the universe and how it was a void and a great dance at the same time. \u201cYes,\u201c he breathed, and the yes vibrated through his body and into his soul and she could see one of his illusions, the one that said that women were a thing apart, alien and perhaps dangerous, shatter into stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201c she said teasingly, this time pulling away so she could speak to him with her human voice, and so she could run her hands over his body.<\/p>\n

She blessed his nipples and chuckled as he gasped at the new sensation. They tightened into small, hard buds of pleasure, and after a stunned, frozen second, he figured out that he should do the same for her. His touch was tentative, almost too gentle, but Tara could feel the curiosity and joy flowing through him, overcoming his doubts, could feel his long-denied love for the female half of humanity starting to blossom. Being who and what she was, that brought her more pleasure than a more skillful, but less warm caress might.<\/p>\n

She blessed the flat plane of his belly and felt the universe smile as he did.<\/p>\n

Such a fine belly, and part of a such a overly disciplined body! She couldn\u2019t resist tickling him a bit.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t know how to react at first. It was not every day a man got tickled by a divine avatar. When the bodhisattva laughed like the mischievous girl-woman she appeared to be, and when the divine avatar was Tara, who making the stream chuckle and the grass smile with her playful joy, a man could eventually figure out the correct reaction.<\/p>\n

He tickled her back. To her glee, he was much less uncertain about that than he\u2019d been, at first, about kissing and caressing. Young monks, like other young creatures, needed to let off stream. Playful wrestling and rough-housing were common, at least when the older and more sedate brothers weren\u2019t looking.<\/p>\n

His hands danced over the soft curve of her belly, making her squirm and laugh. Then, as if the hands had a will of their own, they moved lower, so she squirmed for a different reason, and opened her legs, and encouraged him to touch her.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo slick.\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you can enter me and we can know oneness.\u201c He grasped his member and pressed it against her, looking like he was ready to know that oneness now, and she chuckled to herself at his eagerness. \u201cTime has no meaning here, dear one. Get to know my body first, for it will give us both pleasure.\u201c She put his exploring fingers on her clitoris and showed him how to move them in a gentle, but not too gentle, circle.<\/p>\n

He figured out on his own that she might like something inside her yoni, and made a gorgeous, strangled noise as his questing fingers opened her up, feeling her slickness and tightness and warmth. It wasn\u2019t just the heat of mortal flesh, but that of all love pulsing inside her body. He was shy he was clumsy, he was eager and frightened at the same time, and it still felt like falling into the Milky Way, because she could feel his wonder as well as her own body\u2019s reaction and the throbbing that filled not just his cock, but all of him. She opened her thighs and her heart and her soul, letting him feel how his touch affected her.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels that good?\u201c he breathed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least as good as this does,\u201c Tara replied, stroking the length of his cock until he moaned. It was so heavy and hot in her hand and twitched like it had a life of its own. She\u2019d remembered the pleasure that human bodies could feel together, but had forgotten some of the exquisite sensory details.<\/p>\n

She felt what he felt, felt small hands that thrummed with the energy of the universe moving on a member she didn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

Her body trembled, on the verge of convulsion, and she repeated a mantra to hold orgasm at bay. The point here wasn\u2019t merely pleasure, although they would both find it in the end. It was to show Lobsang that the joys of the body were not divorced from the joys of the spirit.<\/p>\n

And that took time.<\/p>\n

To read the rest, download the ebook now!<\/em><\/p>\n

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ebook $3.99 ISBN 9781885865779 27,117 words [wp_eStore_add_to_cart id=123]   (also available on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and AllRomanceEbooks) Four erotic tales featuring folkloric settings of India, Japan, Korea, and a fantastic orient that never was. Table of Contents: Tara is Compassion; Tara is Play by Teresa Noelle Roberts Mud Licker by Elizabeth Black One Thousand by Andrea … Continue reading Like A Myth edited by Cecilia Tan<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":871,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-275","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/275\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}