After they dropped off Polaris, Venus mentioned to Marcus that her afternoon classes had been canceled because the professor was ill.  “Would you like to get together for a chat?” he asked.

     “I sure would! Um, I mean, I’d really love to talk about the strange thing that happened when we were doing the ‘welcome home’ ritual.”

     “Yes, that’s just what I have in mind ~ and maybe a few other things. We should get better acquainted.”

     Venus could hardly believe he was saying this to her while they were alone together ~ the implications were wonderful, but she didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. As usual, she was involuntarily making subtle provocative body movements, but Marcus was as stolid as ever. They arrived at her drop-off spot in front of Sproul Plaza, and arranged a time when he would return here and pick her up.

     A few hours later Venus was back at the curb looking up the street for the approach of the Range Rover, when suddenly there was a tap on her shoulder.  She swiveled around in startlement, and there stood Marcus. “Oh, you came on foot!” she said.

     “Yes, it’s such a nice day I thought we might just go for a stroll on campus. Is that okay with you?”

     “Sure! It’s pretty scenic, after all. And we won’t have to go far to find a spot to sit an’ talk.”

     They turned left from Sather Gate, strolled with the crowd for a bit, then stepped off the walkway and followed the creek till they came to a bower partly concealed by trees and shrubs. Marcus offered his jacket as a blanket to sit on, but Venus assured him that the grass would be fine. Her skirt was fairly narrow, so she had to lean on one hand with her legs extended to the side, a strategic posture she was used to in such situations.

     Meanwhile, Marcus circumambulated the bower, walking along the bank of the creek on one side and past the open area on the other. When he returned to his starting-point he sat down. Venus was slightly puzzled, but said nothing; she had other things on her mind.

     “So,” said Marcus, “what’s your impression of the experience we had at the dinner table?”

     “Well,” she replied after a moment of thought, “I remembered more of it when you said that we got possessed by the real Mars and Venus. I haven’t done acid yet, but my mind definitely got expanded a few times on some super-strong pot ~ and what happened was like that, but way more. I really thought my whole body expanded too, and I was this superwoman who could see and feel incredible things. The room around us turned into a glorious scene, like Paradise ~ or maybe Olympus. And there you were, my long-lost lov… er, I mean….”

     “It’s okay to say it ~ I felt exactly the same thing.”

     “You did? Wow!”

     “You were Aphrodite and I was Ares, the ultimate lovers as seen by the Greeks.”

     “But what does that mean? Were we really a god and goddess in some other life? Most of my professors don’t believe in any kind of God or religion, but I study psychology and am learning about the archetypes. That’s what they say the old pagan gods were ~ and some of them would add the Christian God too.”

     “The Gods are real ~ all of them. They’re actual beings with a life of their own, even though it overlaps in a big way with the human collective unconscious. But let’s not get into that now ~ we have more pressing matters to discuss. Yes, we were together in other lives. What do you think about reincarnation?”

     “To be honest, I never thought much of the idea at all ~ it seemed really far-fetched.  But now I guess I’m not so sure.”

     “My Acarya ~ my teacher in India ~ awakened my memory of a past life, so I know personally that it’s true.”

     She whistled. “That’s amazing ~ I guess I have a lot to learn. But can humans really incarnate as Gods? I never heard of anything like that, even in mythology courses.”

     “They can embody archetypes, of which the Gods are the highest form. For instance, Venus-Aphrodite has her likeness in other cultures: she’s Freya to the Nordics and Shakti to the Hindus, or Radha in some sects. You and I may have been together as a man and woman made in the mold of the divine couple shadowed forth in those forms, even if we fell short of divinity ourselves.”

     Venus gave a little shake and said, “Whoa, this is mind-blowing just to talk about! But Marcus, now that we’ve had that experience and are getting turned on to… to this larger dimension of ourselves….”

     “That’s a great way to put it!”

     “Thanks, but my question is, what do we do about it? Where do we go from here?”

     He paused, running his hand through the grass. Then he looked at her ingenuously and asked: “Do you have any romantic feelings for me?”

     She was stunned, and momentarily speechless.  “Just be honest,” he urged.

     Lowering her eyes she said, “Well… yes! I figured you could tell. But gee, you’re married an’ all, so where does that leave us?”

     She shifted her position in distraction, swinging her legs around to the other side, and in mid-swoop spread them just enough for Marcus to get a peek all the way up to her panties ~ which, in contrast to her demure outer garments, were flaming pink.

     She looked back at him and got another shock: his eyes were alight with passion. It seemed that at last her provocative gestures had struck a nerve. Slowly and intently he looked her up and down, as many a man had done before ~ but never before had such a wave of force and feeling rippled along her body in response. Suddenly she felt exposed to the quick of her marrow ~ she blushed from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, and her arms moved of their own accord to try to cover herself, to conceal the nakedness she felt under the fiery gaze of this man. It was futile.

     Marcus took hold of her and kissed her. For a moment she instinctively resisted, but this only made his implacable force more erotically stimulating. She returned the kiss and sucked in his tongue. Meanwhile his hands were snaking their way into her private parts, injecting them with delectable venom. He deftly undid the top buttons of her blouse and quickly reached a nipple under the bra. An electric current slivered through her body from the hand on her breast to the fingers in her yoni, and an incandescent flame shot up her spine to her brain. Her world became filled with light, and she felt herself melting away.

     On his side of the embrace, Marcus was plumbing the depths of the girl’s psyche, while drawing exquisite pleasure from her flesh. He sought and found the wellsprings of her passion, where there bloomed some flowers so exotic that even he, a tantric adept, was astonished. At length he withdrew his mouth and hands, and watched her face as awareness of self and surroundings returned.

     “Oh my God,” she said, “we’re doing all this in a public place!”

     With a twinkle in his eye Marcus said, “Don’t worry, no one will notice.”

     “What?! The walkway is only a stone’s throw ~ look at all the people passing by. And someone could come traipsing along by the creek any minute.”

     She began to reorder her clothing, but suddenly Marcus took her by the shoulders, turned her around facing the walkway, and grasped her hands behind her back. She gasped and tried to free herself, but his grip was an iron band, though not painful. “Marcus, let me go!” she cried; “This is crazy!” Her shoes had come off, and her bare legs floundered about facing the passersby, with her skirt hiked up so far that her panties were fully on view. Her breasts hung out the top of her blouse like melons; the cup of her bra still covered one, but the other had popped out. She was frantic and panicked ~ and incredibly aroused. For this was a kink that Marcus had found in her deeps, a perturbation of her lust: to be helplessly exposed enflamed her libido, and the shame and embarrassment simply stoked the furnace.

     Little did she know in her distress that Marcus’ quick stroll around the bower was for a bit of magic: he had established an aegis around it, a psychic shield that would prevent anyone from seeing or intruding upon them. Of course she mustn’t be informed of this, or it would deflate her bubble of orgone.

     With his free hand Marcus again started stimulating Venus’ vagina. Now she was terrified that they would get arrested for lewd behavior, and Marcus’ expert titillation of her clitoris transmuted this burgeon of intense fear into its ecstatic opposite, until her last stricture snapped and she began to come. It was a miraculous arrival into an exalted state of being, far beyond that of the mortal woman or even the Goddess she embodied. She was a throbbing blob of cosmic plasma firmly encased in a restraining matrix, like a babe in the womb. The placenta was not skewered into her navel but the base of her spine, where the head of Marcus’ hard phallus pressed against it and filled it with the fire of life and love and destiny. Surely she would be born at any instant in a burst of glory, but instead the divine substance began to recoagulate as her body. Her mind came back too, as Marcus gently turned her around and they embraced in a luxurious glow that lingered for a long time.

     When Venus finally stirred, she found herself seated in Marcus’ lap with her legs entwined around him. She reawoke to their exposed situation, but Marcus said: “There was never any danger. I took care of everything.” As logically improbable as it sounded, she felt completely reassured. “Now you can get yourself together,” he added.

     Reluctantly she left his embrace and straightened up her clothing. She was rebuttoning her blouse when Marcus said, “Leave the tops ones open.” Her hands spontaneously obeyed and fell away, so she was still sporting some cleavage. He stood up and took her in a half-hug, an arm around her shoulder. At last her voice returned, with a tinge of residual breathlessness: “That was incredible! I can’t believe it happened without intercourse. It was better than my best times making love. None of them ever took me that far out of this world.”

     “The afternoon is still young,” he said, “and the temperature feels about seventy. Want to go somewhere private?”

     “Yes!” she gasped, hugging him again.

     “I know a very special spot in the hills. It’s not far past the house, easy to get to, yet completely isolated. It also has a spectacular view.”

     “Let’s go!”, she said, her voice back at full volume. And off they walked hand-in-hand.