‘You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this to happen,’ murmured Isidora huskily, nibbling at his lower lip as she manipulated his penis.
‘Same here!’ gasped Jonathan, for a moment half-believing it was true, then almost immediately hating himself for what he was feeling. There was a sort of loathsome voluptuousness to the way she was touching and rubbing him, and he suddenly understood the sweet, sickly lure of forbidden fruit – and how bad women down the ages had been adored.
‘Shall we go to my room?’ he said, almost choking on the words, he felt so aroused. His sex had swollen and hardened so much that it seemed to be an iron bar dragging on his belly; a rod of engorged flesh that would explode if he didn’t soon find release.
‘No, why wait?’ growled Isidora, sliding herself sinuously off the sofa and on to the rug, and dragging Jonathan down with her by his cock. ‘Let’s get comfortable right here,’ she urged, and with one last provocative squeeze, set free his cock. ‘You’re not scared of being found out, are you?’ she teased, beginning to undress for him with no apparent qualms.
Jonathan had seen Paula in a bathing suit on several occasions, but as Isidora slipped off her last garments – a thin white bra and panties – he experienced a lack of phase between image and illusion. The revealed body was undeniably Paula’s, but it had never seemed so irresistible until now.
‘Touch me!’ the sorceress ordered, lying back on the antique rug and parting her legs. Jonathan could instantly see every detail – her copious juices trickling down over her inner thighs and bottom, the swollen puffiness of her vulva and her clitoris enlarged and standing out, as if to invite the ministrations of a man.
‘Jonathan, I command you to touch me!’ Isidora cried hoarsely, reaching down to part her outer labia with her fingers.
Jonathan obeyed. He felt both entranced by what was so blatantly offered, and afraid of what would happen if he refused it. As he slipped the tips of his fingers into her furrow, he found that the unusual coolness of her skin did not extend to her genital organs. The wet terrain between her thighs was burning hot, and he felt it ripple as if further to entice him. When he began to rub her, her thighs trapped his hand like a vice.
‘Yes!’ she crooned, reaching up and wrapping her whole self around him. Her body rocked and she ground her nakedness against his still clothed torso, then she growled like a lioness in evident pleasure, her vulva tensing and relaxing beneath his touch.
Isidora’s orgasm seemed to last for an eternity, exciting Jonathan beyond measure in return. He felt as if he were hovering on the edge of a brink of some kind, engaged in a dangerous sport that could kill him at any second; holding his breath, ready to soar up or descend. Adrenalin pumped and his heart was thudding wildly.
As he hesitated, Isidora ceased her writhing then sat up straight and pushed him backwards, looming over him.
When she murmured, ‘Your turn,’ he felt his perilous plunge begin.
Belinda suddenly felt embarrassed as well as frightened. How could she just make love like this; in cold blood, in plain sight, with no preamble? How could she even begin when she knew how it might end?
And if she had doubts, might not André have them too?
As if reading her thoughts precisely, he looked up from his contemplation of the glowing rosewood box. ‘Come here,’ he said softly to Belinda, his face a little eerie in the rising blue radiance.
She went to him and sat down on the pew beside him, as Michiko set about some complex, arcane task which involved muted chanting and the burning of incense.
‘I know,’ said André as Belinda sat down. ‘This must seem so contrived to you, so strange.’ He smiled, and his blue eyes twinkled in a way that was so normal and boyishly appealing that she felt the first twist of sweet desire in her belly. ‘And you are right. It is the most unnatural reason to make love, under the most unnatural of circumstances. But if things were different …’ He shrugged and let his breath out in a sigh.
Noticing a fluctuation in the quality of the light, Belinda looked down at the box on André’s lap, resting among the folds of his luxurious silken cloak.
How could someone live in there? And that someone; how might she feel about what André had implied? That in other circumstances, he would happily have betrayed her with Belinda.
She looked up again, and saw that he had been staring at the box as well. ‘You could have been friends,’ he said, his voice barely audible. ‘Sisters even, soul sisters. You are so alike, so akin in many ways … Here!’ he said suddenly, lifting the box and offering it to Belinda.
She hesitated, her fingers pleating the thin muslin of her dress.
‘She will not bite,’ assured André, smiling.
Belinda took the box and immediately felt a diffuse impact. A force. A presence. The wood was cool to the touch, but her brain twisted the message in its interpretation somehow, and Belinda perceived it as warmth. She felt a great rush of emotion, a recognition, a kindred feeling that was so powerful it was almost erotic. Without thinking she found herself stroking the box, almost petting it. She felt a great urge to open it and look inside.
‘Go ahead,’ said André.
Or was it André? There had been a strange almost ringing quality to the words, as if it had not only been him who had spoken.
Within the box was a stoppered crystal flask which was filled with a swirling hazy substance that could be defined as neither liquid nor gas. The colour was incredible – the simple word ‘blue’ was not sufficient to encompass it. It was sky; it was ocean; it was the most exquisite jewel-blue, sapphire or lapis lazuli. The substance – the ‘personality’ – was formless, yet Belinda’s senses told her she was looking at a smile. The essence of a greeting, of a touch; the feeling of love.
‘Hello,’ she whispered, letting her fingertips rest on the vial, and experiencing another surge of the disembodied impression of welcome. It was the psychic equivalent of a hug. An embrace of sisterhood and all that it entailed, an emotion that dispersed her fears and doubts. She felt a sudden eagerness to know this, her strange sibling, better; to share her life and her mind, if only briefly.
‘Come, it is time,’ said a voice that sounded as if it came from miles away. Belinda looked up and saw Michiko standing over them, an imposing figure in her ornate wig and her layered silk finery. She was holding out her hands, ready to receive the precious container. Belinda kissed the vial, feeling its cool surface tingle on her lips like sherbet, then closed the box and passed it reverently to Michiko.
‘So we begin,’ said André, rising at Belinda’s side and offering his hand to assist her to her feet.
As Michiko bowed, holding the box in her slender white hands, Belinda let André lead her courteously towards the table.
* * *
‘Oh God!’ moaned Jonathan as hot sensation surged through him in waves. Isidora was above him, astride his loins, her naked body bouncing up and down on him, her cool vagina a tight sleeve around his cock.
‘It’s nothing to do with him,’ she growled, swivelling her hips in a way that seemed more animal than human – if that was what she was, or ever had been.
Jonathan hardly dared look up at her as she rode him. The more he saw of her in the throes of copulation, the less he could see of familiar Paula. The features above him were those of his friend and colleague, but the expression and the frenzy were dark and alien. He had never really fancied Paula, much less been to bed with her, but instinct told him she could never be like this.
Isidora was using him, engulfing him, overwhelming him. He felt as if he were being drained dry by a bottomless black void; his vital energy being siphoned from him through his cock. Yet again, she circled her pelvis, then jerked down hard.
‘Caress me, Jonathan,’ she urged, her voice harsh and raw with sex as she clasped his limp hands then clutched them to her breasts.
He groaned, feeling the resilient orbs of flesh against his fingers, and hating himself for the way his body reacted. His peni
s stiffened and lurched within the confines of her body, and his balls felt like boiling fiery stones. Without conscious thought, he began to knead her breasts.
‘Yes!’ she squealed, squeezing him in return, her inner muscles flexing on his shaft.
Jonathan whimpered, bucking his hips up against her and getting a low, feral grunt of appreciation. This was the wildest, darkest most breathtaking sex he had ever experienced, the whole process rendered profoundly thrilling because of the danger. He had a strong but illogical feeling that Isidora was fully aware that he knew she wasn’t Paula, and was putting him through the grinder in order to drive that awareness home. She was fucking him into submission, and making him too much hers to protest. And though he didn’t know how, she was keeping him hard beyond his endurance. Under treatment like this, he should have ejaculated many minutes ago.
‘Oh, this is so good,’ she growled, grabbing his hair and wrenching him up from the rug beneath them to kiss his gasping lips. His hands, still holding her breasts, were squashed between their bodies. ‘Isn’t this good?’ she demanded of him, the words distorted by the mashing of their mouths and the duelling of their tongues.
Jonathan’s scalp hurt furiously where she pulled at him, and his back felt ready to snap in two, but his entire groin was one pulsating well of ecstasy. It was as if his cock was about to explode in the very next second, and that when it did it would kill him, but he couldn’t summon the energy to care. His pelvis juddered, and he knew his climax was imminent –
But when he hit the leading edge of it, Isidora cried out in fear.
‘No!’ she shrieked. ‘The devil take you, no!’ And even as Jonathan spurted, she was leaping up and off him, a startling transformation beginning before his pleasure-blurred eyes.
Staggering to her feet was a woman he had never seen before.
Belinda sighed. She licked her lips. André’s kiss had expunged the bitterness somehow. She could no longer taste the potion’s astringent flavour.
She felt weak now, too, but pleasantly so. She didn’t complain when André eased her on to her back on their makeshift but comfortable couch. She simply smiled at him, then smiled again, over his shoulder, at Michiko, who was studying the huge book on the lectern before her, and murmuring softly in what sounded like Latin.
The chant was soothing, and Belinda let her eyes flutter closed. In a dreamy, pleasant cocoon, she felt André’s lips roving over her throat and her chest in an arcane pattern that must have been decreed a thousand years ago by the gods. His mouth was cool but exciting, his tongue flicking out to lick her skin. After a few moments, she felt his hands slide beneath her, lift her a little way off the quilted mattress, and deftly unhitch the fastenings of her blue dress. She giggled a little as he drew it off her then just as cleverly removed her thin cotton shift. All these actions seemed to be occurring a long long way away from her, yet she still received delicious messages from her body when André’s chilly fingers touched her skin.
‘I want you,’ she purred to him, the words slipping from her without conscious volition. Reaching for him, she tugged at the corded silk fastening of his floating blue cloak, then pushed the garment off his shoulders. She heard a swish as it fell to the chapel floor.
They were both naked now, in the balmy night air, their bodies quickly pressing and fitting together. Belinda was aware of a thick rush of moisture between her thighs, her channel flowing as if to invite André’s penis. He was hard and enticing against her leg, and she put a hand on him as he pressed a finger to her sex.
Michiko turned a page, and whispered on.
After a moment, André began to rub in earnest, and Belinda heard herself laugh with delight as her vulva quivered.
‘This is for you, Belinda,’ he said, pressing his lips against the skin of her arching throat. ‘Just for you, and you alone.’ His fingers curved cleverly, pressing on either side of her clitoris and making it roll like a bearing in thick oil.
After a moment, she came – a very clear, light orgasm that was so effortless she cried out happily. Her legs scissored and she scrabbled at his back to pull him closer, feeling her quim pulsate and joyful tears run down her cheeks.
Drifting in a perfect aftermath, she felt André lift her upper body away from the mattress; but she was so loose with residual pleasure that she could do nothing to help him. As he held her, draped forward across him, Michiko was suddenly beside them, and Belinda sensed something narrow and silky being threaded around her. When she looked down she saw it was a long length of white satin ribbon, which the Japanese sorceress was winding loosely about her bare waist. When she was finished, one tail was left dangling over the side of the table and the other was run down over Belinda’s belly and then drawn meticulously between the swimming folds of her still-aroused sex. She could feel its ghostly presence against her clitoris and just touching her entrance.
She did not seem to need to question the arrangement, and she was unsurprised when André positioned himself gracefully between her thighs, then pushed deeply and surely inside her, his cock brushing the trapped silk ribbon.
‘Oh my dearest,’ he groaned, sliding his arms around her waist.
Belinda felt her head begin to lighten strangely. She could feel him in her and feel the satisfaction of it, but the sensations were still coming from a great, great distance. Even further than before, and through time now as well as through space.
She kissed his throat, and had the sudden impression that she was watching another woman kiss him, even though she could feel his smooth skin beneath her lips. His penis was stretching her, yet seemed to be lodged in some other vagina. The condition was peculiar, but she felt no trace of fear.
As André began to move gently inside her, Belinda felt an urge to turn her head. Looking to one side, and peering through what seemed like an oscillating nimbus of light, she saw Michiko standing beside them, her lips still moving. She was not reading from the book now, but reciting something she must have known by heart. In one hand she held the silky end of the pure white ribbon, in the other the crystal vial that contained Arabelle.
Slowly, still murmuring, the Michiko tipped the vial, and the blue radiance poured out and seemed to gather in the ribbon. When the transparent vessel was empty, the shifting blueness began to flow swiftly along the inch-wide strand of white.
Belinda would have watched, but she felt André shift his position a little so he could reach up and touch her cheek. Angling her face towards his, he looked down at her, his eyes like twin blazing sapphires, his whole face transfigured.
‘It is happening … Oh dear God, it is happening!’ His mouth pressed down on hers, still moving in a final kiss that stole her senses. ‘Oh thank you … Oh thank you, Belinda,’ was the last thing she heard.
Epilogue
‘WHAT HAPPENED? DID it work?’ cried Jonathan, bounding into the chapel, his face blanched and wild.
Belinda felt a reassuring squeeze, Michiko’s strong arm supporting her and revivifying her, and with a quick glance at the Japanese woman she said, ‘I think so.’
‘Yes, it worked,’ said Michiko quietly, her face radiant beneath its white cosmetic mask. ‘Completely. My friends are free now.’ Belinda saw her shoot an enquiring glance at Jonathan. ‘There is nothing more to fear.’
‘Are you all right?’ he enquired, moving towards the table where Belinda was sitting supported by Michiko. She had André’s starry cloak around her, and she felt cold and more than a little shaky, but she could not say that there was anything really wrong with her. She was suffering from mild shock, she guessed, but otherwise all felt well.
‘I’m OK,’ she replied, giving him a smile, but not sure it would convince him. Then, looking more closely at her boyfriend, she frowned instead. ‘But what about you? You look terrible!’
Jonathan’s face was still unnaturally pale, and his hair was standing up in tufts, as if he had run his fingers through it again and again. His clothes were rumpled and half unfastened, and he was bar
efoot. His eyes were almost starting out of his head.
‘I’ve never been so scared in my life,’ he said, a slight quiver in his voice as he sat down beside her. ‘One minute, I’m getting it on with Paula –’ He flashed Belinda a shamefaced look, but she touched his arm to reassure him ‘– and the next minute, she’s leaping up off me and she isn’t Paula at all. And she’s screeching and whirling about, almost as if she was on fire or something. Then suddenly, “poof”, she disappears! I was so terrified I damn nearly wet myself!’
Belinda could feel his arm shaking beneath her fingers. She squeezed it gently. Jonathan’s experience obviously hadn’t been quite the lyrical one she had participated in. Not that she knew properly what had happened. She had woken up a few minutes before, cradled in Michiko’s arms, but of André and his spirit lover there had been no sign at all.
‘She is gone for ever now, Jonathan,’ said Michiko calmly, beginning to gather up the paraphernalia of the freeing: the grimoire, the crystal flask, the limp silk ribbon. ‘Her original spell bound her existence to André’s. So when he went, so did she.’ She shrugged her kimono-clad shoulders. ‘But not, I’m afraid, to quite the same place.’ Wearing a wry smile, Michiko continued her task.
Belinda looked at Jonathan and they exchanged a glance of tacit agreement, then both got to their feet to help. Belinda felt slightly rubbery at the knees at first, but after a moment, she regained enough strength to move around carefully.
‘What will happen to Oren, and Feltris and Elisa?’ asked Jonathan, a little while afterwards, as they were walking back towards the moonlit house. Michiko had left the accoutrements of the ritual gathered together on the table for Oren to collect later, but in her arms she was carrying the great grimoire.
‘I will take them into my service, if they wish it,’ the Japanese sorceress said. ‘I am thinking of making a home in England. Perhaps I will even settle here at the priory. That way they can continue to live here undisturbed.’
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