Lilith opened the door, by witchcraft of course, from across the room.
I entered, again adhering to symbolism; my naked, or pure body stepping over the threshold representing penetration. Lilith stepped from the shadows and stood before me, naked, her hair now tied back off her shoulders and flowing down her back. She nudged me into a circle on the floor drawn in witch dust, a glittery mix of sand and magic dust also used in the rite of passage ceremony. I looked down at the circle, not remembering that element of the ritual in the logs I studied.
“Nice touch,” I said, after realizing she had improvised that detail.
“Thanks.” She raised her hand and snapped her fingers. A candle in the north corner of the room lit up. I immediately snapped mine, lighting a candle in the east corner. In quick succession, she snapped hers again, I snapped mine again, lighting candles in the south, and west corners of the room nearly at once.
“Passion?” I said.
She rewarded me with a smile. “Yes. The candles symbolize the heat of passion. You did your homework.”
“Yes I did.”
She cast her eyes into the shadows. I followed her lead and spotted a chalice sitting on the dresser across the room. “Uh, yes,” I said, “the wine.” I stepped from the circle, retrieved the chalice and returned it in cupped hands. “For you, my love” I said, presenting the fermented nectar to Lilith as a symbol of our maturity. “May this wine represent the flow of life-blood spent through sacrifice now and always.”
“Aye, `tis for thee I live. Thine is a love what no heart doth take lightly.”
She took the chalice, raised it to her lips and tipped her head back. As she drank, she let some of the wine spill out the sides of the challis. It drizzled off her chin and neck, down her chest where it funneled between her breasts, paraded in single-file droplets passed her navel and pudendum and then onto the floor.
I got down on my knees and pressed my lips against her at the place where the wine last dripped off her body. I then followed the wine trail, kissing it softly all the way back to her mouth, thus representing love’s long trek to oneness.
She handed me the chalice next. I took it and drank from it as she had, allowing the wine to spill at the corners of my mouth. It ran a similar path down my neck, chest, stomach and beyond. She knelt before me; her knees staining red in the puddles of wine at my feet. I opened my stance. She pressed her warm lips against me. My heart quickened. I felt a surge of blood give movement to the area closest to her. She looked up at me and smiled.
“Not yet, Tony.”
I smiled back. “Sorry. Reflex.”
She continued following the trail of wine up the length of my body, over my chest, across my neck and back to my lips. Then she kissed me, the hottest, sweetest kiss I had even known.
“Now,” she said. “I’ve got to tie you up.”
“I know. I’m ready.”
She hiked her thumb up over her shoulder. “Get in bed. Assume the Vitruvius pose.”
“The what?”
“Vitruvius. You know, Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvius Man.” She spread her legs and held her arms out by her side with her hands roughly level to the height of her body. Yeah?”
“Oh, like the sketch, of course.”
I climbed into bed, laid on my back, set my head on the pillow and assumed the Vitruvius pose. “Like this?”
She crossed her arms at her chest and shifted her weight onto one hip. “Yeah, but relax a little. I’m not strapping you to the rack.”
“I’m sorry. I’m nervous.”
“What’s to be nervous about? It’s not like I’m going to yank your teeth out. Besides, this ritual is all about trust. We’re giving of each other.”
“Then why not let me tie you to the bed.”
She shook her head and dismissed the idea promptly. “No. I’ve never let anyone tie me up. I’m not about to start now.”
“Ha! Some trust factor.”
“Chill, will you? Here. Hold these.”
She handed me three pieces of string, two white and one black. A fourth piece, another black one, she used to tie my left hand to the bed post. “What’s this? You’re tying me up with string?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not using rope?”
“Rope? Tony, this isn’t the Middle Ages. We stopped using ropes and chains years ago. It’s archaic.”
“But I can break the string easily.”
“Well, duh!”
I set my head back onto the pillow and smiled like a fool. “This is going to be fun then, isn’t it?”
“No, Tony. It’s a ball of horror. What did you think a consummation ritual was going to be like?”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think.”
“Huh, well by the time I’m through redirecting the blood supply from your brain, you won’t be doing much thinking at all. So just relax and let me do all the driving. Got it?”
“Sure. Lead on.”
She took the next piece of black string and tied my left ankle to the post at the foot of the bed. “I mentioned that this ritual is all about trust,” she said. “And as you know and demonstrated, it’s also about symbolism. Nothing symbolizes trust more than allowing one’s self to be tied up. They say there’s a yin and yang to all things in life. Same is true in witchcraft.
“I’m using black ties on the left side of your body to symbolize the dark side of nature. Fire and earth are the elements that represented turmoil, upheaval and disruption through the inevitable cycles of change. These are the elements that feed your fears and prevent you from obtaining total awareness in your mortal state.”
“I see.”
She finished tying me down with the black strings and proceeded to the right side of the bed. “I use white ties to symbolize the light side of nature,” she explained. “Air and water are the elements that give us life, feed our souls and foster a greater awareness that transcends mortal consciousness.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, but like fire and earth, air and water are still tangibles, all related, but removed from the quintessential or fifth element.”
“Love?”
“Love.”
After tying my hands and feet securely, Lilith crossed the room, retrieved a small wooden box from a dresser drawer and returned it to the night stand. She opened the lid, reached into the box, and removed a blindfold.
“This is optional,” she said. Do you want it?”
I shook my head. “No. To deny my eyes the beauty that is you is to deny all pleasure in its utmost entirety.”
“Aw, that’s sweet.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Bullshit, but sweet. Nice try. Two points for effort.”
She reached into the box again and removed a single falcon’s feather and talon. “This is the fun part,” she said, but in a whisper so soft I could barely hear.
She held the feather up in her left hand, the talon in her right. Shadows on the wall behind her stood in cold contrast to her beauty, her naked silhouette dancing in the nervous flicker of candlelight, the same light that gave the front of her body the warm glow of a breaking dawn.
“You have demonstrated your unwavering trust in our love by submitting yourself unconditionally,” she said. Her eyes found a level plane, her smile the thin stretch of a serpent’s grin.
I felt a tingle in my body that seemed to itch all over, perhaps anticipating the work of the talon and feather in portions only she could control.
She climbed up onto the bed and positioned herself on her knees in the open space between my legs.
“The feather represents the tantalizing joys of love,” she said, teasing me with long soft strokes of the feather around the areas below my stomach and between my legs. I lurched upward involuntarily several times when the feather brushed upon the most sensitive parts of that region, arousing an interest that was obvious and noticeable. I lifted my head off the pillow, sculpting a six-pack with my abs and coaxing a smile on her face.
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“That’s cruel,” I said. “You know I want you to take it.”
She shook her head and then showed me the talon. “Cruel is a variable perception,” she said, and she began slowly dragging the talon across the same familiar landscape. “The talon represents love’s harsh grip, for it is said, none hath matched the wicked deeds as that which love hath hatched in scorn.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means shut up. I’m getting in the groove.”
She continued raking the talon across my body, down my stomach, along the inside of my thighs and over the erogenous areas of my sculpted anatomy. Again, my buttocks tightened as I lurched upward in repeated involuntary thrusts. I felt my heartbeat quickened. My breath grew heavy and deep. My chest heaved.
“Apart,” she said, “The talon and feather are mighty opposites of love’s two sides. But together, they symbolize love’s precarious volatility, the excitement and energy needed to sustain an everlasting relationship.”
She had me at full attention then, and with alternating brushes of the two instruments in unequal, unpredictable intervals, I was nearly ready to explode. I wanted so much to snap the strings that bound me and take her under my own terms, but imagining I couldn’t, only added to the insane sensualism.
I finally couldn’t help myself. I said to her, “Lilith, if you don’t speed this along, I might just finish this without you.”
She tossed the talon and feather aside, positioned herself accordingly, straddled her mark, directed the alignment with a guiding hand and received me completely. We fell into a rhythm that started slow, increased with the rapid beating of our hearts and excelled to a pace uncontrollably wild.
I know of no words to describe the surreal intimacy of the moment that we climaxed together; the shrieks, the extreme muscle spasms and the exhausted last breath we expelled simultaneously told me we had.
Later, when we both started breathing normally again, Lilith reached into the nightstand and retrieved the athame, a dagger-like instrument with a long, wavy blade, crumpled like a piece of tin. Its hilt was carved of animal bone, notched for each finger and topped with a pommel of polished teak. It was the same blade we used the night before to call on the Coven, and one I’m sure Lilith has used in countless other rituals long before my time.
She used the blade to ceremoniously cut the strings tying me to the bed, first the black ones and then the white. Once done, she surrendered it to me so that I might, theoretically, stab her to death with it. That being her symbolic gesture of her trust and faith in me, I accepted it gladly. In keeping with tradition, of course, I laid the blade upon my chest, directly over my heart. She leaned forward, stretching her legs out straight and pressing her chest to mine, sandwiching the blade between us. Our bodies were still joined below the waists. I wrapped my arms around her and cupped her cheeks.
We kissed.
“Is that it?” I asked.
She smiled at me. “That’s it. Thank you for doing that. It meant a lot to me.”
“Me, too, more than I thought it would.”
“That’s good.”
“So now you’re pregnant, huh?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re pregnant. That’s the whole idea of the consummation ritual, isn’t it?”
She smiled wickedly. “Are you serious?” She rolled off me, got out of bed, positioned her hands on her hips in that standoffish way of hers and proceeded to stare me down.
“Yes. I thought….”
“No! You jerk! That’s not the whole idea of the consummation ritual. The idea of the ritual is to consummate our marriage in the tradition of the Coven. Where did you ever get such a cockamamie idea? You know I don’t like kids.”
“I don’t know. I just assumed since Dominic and Ursula got pregnant the first time they––”
“That’s stupid! Is that why you’ve been so reluctant to do this with me? You though it was a baby-making ritual.”
“Well…yeah.”
“Tony, there’s no such thing. Witches make babies the same way everyone else makes babies. They fuck.”
“Well, I didn’t know.”
She softened her stance considerably, taking her hands off her hips, dropping her shoulders and leaning forward to get a better look into my eyes. “You thought I wanted a baby, and you didn’t want one, but you were willing to go through with this anyway, just for me?”
“Yes, of course. I’d do anything for you, Lilith.”
“Tony, that’s so sweet.” She reached down on the floor beside the bed and picked up the falcon’s feather and talon.
“What are you doing with those?” I asked.
“Round two,” she said. She handed them to me. “The first was for the call of tradition. This one’s for the call of the witch. Now move over. You’re driving.”
Tony Marcella 07 - Call of the Witch Page 26