Foreign Affairs

by Jacqueline George

  Her eyes closed. Only for a moment. Then she pulled away and turned round. He found himself spending a lot of time rubbing her breasts, to make sure they were really clean. From her stomach, he went straight to her feet. She balanced herself with one hand on his head while he cleaned each of her toes. Kevin worked by touch alone because his eyes were busy staring at the most open and generous pussy he had ever seen. Beneath her red thatch, her outer lips were tight and slim, firm cushions surrounding the swollen pink petals that burst out between them. It seemed to him that there could only be one way to wash a flower like that, and he bent his head to her. His tongue chased her folds, and she tasted like salty honey.

  Panting lightly, she pulled away. “No. Not yet. We must come together in the Circle.” Pulling on his cock, she led him back across the lawn. It was recovering from its cold bath and filled her hand quite satisfactorily. “I won't make you leave this one in the woodshed.”

  This is not the place to set down all the details of the ritual that followed. They are a secret among the witches and only a little can be told. First Kevin was blindfolded and his elbows tied loosely behind him. She led him to another room. To his heightened senses it seemed very close and still. A hint of incense hung in the air.

  Guiding him into position, she knelt before him. Her breath caressed his thighs as she came to him and pressed kisses over them. Working around his rigid cock, she buried her face in his stomach. Her hair trailed electricity over his skin. Slowly she nibbled down towards him, through his hair and along his length until she licked at his most sensitive places. His sex kicked uncontrollably, and she gripped him so that she could whirl her tongue hard and fast around its swollen head. He stiffened as his excitement rose, but she pulled back. “Wait,” she breathed and left him with a kiss.

  He could hear her moving around him and chanting what seemed to be prayers in a low voice. She lit candles, and he heard her curse as a match broke. More prayers and strong incense filled the room. At last she came for him, leading him forward a few steps.

  The first part of the ritual could be called Kevin's initiation. She asked him questions, and he gave the proper answers. He felt the air move as she made gestures in front of him, and with prayers, touched him in special ways.

  Blindfolded, he was acutely aware of her presence. Each time her hair brushed his skin, a tingling ran down his spine. He could smell her fresh perfume, her hair, even a scent of the woods. Then she untied him and took off his blindfold.

  He stood in a darkened room on a large circular rug with a low table in its centre. On the table sat objects belonging to the Craft, candles and miniature statues. A double-edged knife lay over a photograph that seemed to be of her. Next to the photograph was a small square of paper with the blank outline of a man, like a simple gingerbread man.

  She steered him to four candles standing at the edge of the rug and introduced him to each one, all the time rubbing herself up and down his back like a cat.

  Back near the table, she addressed him formally. “Your body is, for the time being, my servant in the Craft. I will blindfold you, and you will wait. I shall start to cast the spell, and then we will make love. I will be singing and each time you push it into me, you must say the word 'Love.' Promise me, each time it goes in. Come slowly, and I will try to come at the same time. The faster we go, the louder you must say, 'Love,' until you really shout it at the end. Can you do that?”

  Later, when he looked back on his experience at leisure, Kevin realised that he had reacted as if her demands were perfectly normal. As if there was nothing at all strange in being blindfolded and persuaded into making an act of love while shouting. Try as he might to rationalise it, he had to admit there had been magic in that Circle. Not just her own female magic, but something stronger and bigger. A feeling of oneness had included him, and made it natural to do his best to make the spell work.

  She sat him cross-legged in front of the little table and replaced his blindfold. She began chanting again, and he listened carefully to the words. She sang in ordinary English, lyrical but nothing strange. As he listened, he began to understand how the spell would work. The red-haired witch was casting a spell to look for a mate. Not Kevin; he was no more than a tool to provide energy for the spell. She asked whatever spirits she believed in for help to get her a man. That was the meaning of the gingerbread figure. The spell should fill the picture and make it real. Kevin mentally shrugged his shoulders. It was fine with him. He had no difficulty with the idea of helping true love along.

  She started to move around as she sang, dancing and clapping softly. She stood behind him, and he felt her hair flow over his shoulders. He doubled forward as the silky waves washed his back. Then she pulled him back onto the floor and trailed her hair over the front of his body, singing all the time. She spent a lot of time provoking his centre, making it leap and strain in frustration.

  At last she knelt over him and he waited for her to stand his cock upright and sink down on it, but she had other ideas. Instead, she lowered herself onto his lap, pressing his sex hard against his belly, and started to rock backwards and forwards. Her warm wetness kissed and sucked at the base of his shaft as she steadily excited herself against him. He thought he could feel her hand rubbing as she readied herself for her big moment. He tried to peek under his blindfold. The rhythm of her rocking increased with the tempo of her singing.

  Her sex bathed his length, and her soft folds slid easily up and down in her wetness. As last she was ready for him and, leaning forward, she lifted him up to her waiting sheath. Her singing stopped as she sat slowly back down on it, squeezing and rippling down his pillar. “Say 'Love,'” she whispered and started singing a new song.

  She raised herself. “Love,” he muttered as he pushed upwards into her. “Love,” and he pushed again. Soon he was chanting with abandon, driving each succulent thrust home with, “Love!” His blindfold shook loose, but it did not seem to matter anymore.

  Her singing became disjointed and hysterical, and Kevin's chanting became scarcely different from panting. Shadowed in the candlelight, her slim figure towered over him, breasts swinging and bouncing as he pushed up from underneath. “Yes.” She slipped into her song. “Yes. Do it. Yes. Do it now.” She tried to sing as he heaved violently under her again and again, lifting her knees from the floor with each thrust, grunting, “Love, love, love, love....”

  “Yes,” she screamed. “Yes, now. Yes, now—yes, now, now!”

  Kevin's climax gathered itself from every corner of his body. For an agonising, endless moment he paused, arched skywards on only heels and shoulders, all her weight on his bridge. Ecstasy exploded upwards, jetting deep inside her. She flung her arms wide and, staring upwards into the darkness, joined in his final shout. Then, like a rag doll, she collapsed heavily onto him.

  It must have been minutes later that she pushed herself up and, trembling weakly, reached for an earthenware goblet from the table. She leaned back and they looked down at the shadows where they were joined together. She poured a little wine over her red floss so it trickled down between her lips and over his balls. She reached for a plain, homemade biscuit and, breaking it in half, she slipped part between his lips. She chewed the other half thoughtfully.

  “Tell me your name,” he said.

  “My real name is Morning Star. Come —watch me break the Circle and we'll go outside.” She rose slowly to her feet, and his contented cock flopped heavily out of her onto his stomach. He lay watching her lithe figure go through the movements and gestures that broke the Circle and laid it to rest. She took him by the hand and led him into the garden.

  The sun had risen properly now, but most folks would still be having a weekend lie-in. The early light felt good on his skin, and the grass was sweet beneath his naked backside. Morning Star brought bread from the kitchen, with clotted cream and blackberry jam. She laid them on a cloth between them with a touch of reverence. “Thank you so much. There are not many people I could trust to do that. I
don't know how to thank you enough.”

  That's strange, he thought. She doesn't look unimaginative, but he kissed her shoulder and whispered in her ear. Her laughter pealed around the garden, and soon she was lying back with him buried deep inside her again, unmoving while he fed her dollops of cream and blackcurrant jam. Their lovemaking was much more relaxed this time, though almost as noisy.

  As Kevin lay resting on top of her, nibbling her ear, she mused out loud, “I do hope my spell works.” Just like a woman, he thought, me still inside her, and she's already thinking of the future.

  Kevin kept a close eye on the old game-keeper's cottage after that, waiting to see who might turn up after that special morning. No one did; no one else, anyway.

  That was all three years ago or more now, and things have changed very little. The old fox still goes about his business, though he is getting very grey about the muzzle. If he ever took any more young pheasants, Kevin did not notice. He is getting along very well too; living in her cottage is much handier for the woods anyway. If you ever happen to be invited into the Craft, you might meet him. She calls him Dawn Rider now.

  * * * *

  Priscilla felt good when she finally got home to her basement flat in Islington after such a hectic day. She put a frozen meal in the microwave and rushed to the shower. It was her normal routine, and she knew that in just a few minutes she would be relaxing in her dressing gown in front of the television.

  She lingered longer than normal in the shower, washing away the accumulated tension of the day. Over all, it had been a great success, and she was glad the television cameras had come to see it all. And there had been so many of them. By the end of the day, word had got around and even the foreign networks had muscled into the back of the room, trying to get some dramatic footage. Very satisfying. She promised herself half a bottle of wine to celebrate.

  In a light-hearted mood, she laid herself a proper tray with a candle and one of her real wine glasses. It sat in front of her on the coffee table while she fiddled with the remote. All the channels she tried had dropped their normal coverage to concentrate on the case. She was horrified. She had dreamed of being moderately well-known in her profession of course, but public notoriety was something she had never considered. With the compulsion of an addict, she flicked from channel to channel. Everywhere, people were speaking about the case. She stopped when a handsome woman in a cloak caught her eye.

  It was hard to judge just how old she was. Her hair was long and abundant, silver rather than grey. She wore a narrow silver headband with some sort of seal in the centre of her forehead. She spoke animatedly, and Priscilla turned up the sound to hear her.

  “Of course, I realise that the prosecutor knows nothing about the Craft, but that's no excuse at all. Public figures like that should get their facts right before they start insulting people. I know all witches will be deeply hurt by being called completely stupid. We are not part of a fairy story. We are part of the community and have just as many rights as anyone else.”

  “But what about the story?” asked the reporter. “What do you think about that?”

  “That's exactly what I am talking about. I've never met Mr. Trehearne, but it's obvious he did a lot of research before he wrote the story. The details seem completely authentic. And his portrayal of the witch and her attitudes is very sympathetic.”

  “Let me get this right. Do you feel, with all your experience as a witch and the leader of a coven, that what Mr. Trehearne wrote could have been real?”

  “Of course.”

  “Really? You mean you pick herbs with no clothes on at all? And you do your magic in the nude and—er—well, make love as you do it?”

  “Wearing the clothes you were born with is a way of being as close as possible to nature. Sky-clad is what we call it. Witches find this closeness, this naturalness, brings them closer to the Powers. Oh yes, that side of the story is quite real.”

  “And the lovemaking?”

  “Yes, that too. There is a tremendous amount of power generated by two people making love, and if it can be carefully channelled, we can make spells that are irresistible. As in this case, I think. The two people ended up bonded together. A very happy solution.

  “There's one thing that troubles me a bit, however. I travel around and meet other witches. I’ve been a visitor at many celebrations over the past few years, and I have a feeling that I might have met the two people concerned. I'll say no more. But I tell you what I will do, and I'll make the suggestion to any other witches that might be watching. I think we should do everything we can to support Mr. Trehearne and his book. I believe it's good, natural and honest. So I'm going home right now and I'm going to cast the strongest spell I can for his good fortune.”

  “The strongest spell you can? I hope I am not being rude by asking if you will need help to do it?”

  “You're offering to help? How sweet. Well, I would have to ask the other coven members how they view your offer. Why don't you come along and we'll see what happens?”

  Priscilla cut her off by changing the channel. In a crowded bar, a tall woman with platinum blonde hair was being interviewed. She had a deep voice and a five o'clock shadow. “I feel that prosecutor's an absolute bitch. You can see she feels there is no room in the world for anyone who isn't made like her. Just because I'm different between my legs, she discriminates against me. It's disgusting coming from someone in a position like that. She should try to imagine how it feels. Other women put me down all the time. Whenever I go to buy shoes, the assistants can be really catty. Sometimes they even make me cry just because they're so hurtful. That prosecutor should be helping me, not making things worse.

  “I like John Trehearne though. He's a real dish. I bet he knows how to make a woman feel really good. He can invite me for a Chinese dinner anytime.”

  Priscilla switched the set off completely. She did not understand what was happening to the public. In her confusion, she let the telephone ring several times before answering it.

  “Well hello, Priscilla! Have you been watching yourself on television?”

  “I'm sorry, who is this?”

  “You don't recognise me? It's Tatty, remember?”

  Of course. Her voice had a distinctive timbre to it, rather like the Major's but without the military abruptness. “I'm sorry. I'm just a bit confused this evening.”

  “Don't be. You were great. You did really well today.”

  “I'm glad you think so. Everyone on television seems to think I'm an absolute bitch.”

  “Don't worry about them. You couldn't do your job if you were afraid of other people's opinions. You're doing just fine.”

  “Tatty, thank you so much. It's nice to hear a sensible voice, but I've got someone at the door.”

  There had been no one at the door, of course. She just could not bring herself to talk with anyone about her day. Her meal was still untasted in front of her and growing cold. She ate out of a sense of obligation, hardly tasting the food. The wine was uncorked, so she drank it rapidly, hoping that it would help her feel better. It did not, and she went to bed in tears.

  * * * *

  Priscilla deliberately mounted the steps to the RCCS next day as a renewed woman. Yesterday, when she had tripped up them with a light heart, already seemed to be an age away. Today she had steeled herself for a tough struggle. It was her duty to hold Trehearne up to the light, to let everyone see just how foul and dangerous he was.

  A large poster greeted her at the reception desk. The Foreign Affairs 1 Hearing has been transferred to the Odeon Theatre in Allenby Road. She went straight to Valerie's office.

  “Ah, Priscilla, give me a hand with this brooch, would you?” Valerie wore a well-tailored, powder-blue suit, and she was struggling to pin a large rhinestone brooch straight on the lapel. “They told me that the cameras can't tell the difference between this and diamonds, you know. And it's nice to have something that gives a little fire in the lights. Do you like my hair?”

&nb
sp; “Yes, Valerie. You look very distinguished. Isn't that a bit too much makeup?”

  “Well, they told me to put a lot on, and they would touch it up just before we went on stage. What about you? You don't seem to have any on at all.”

  “After all the nasty things they said about me last night, I don't think it would help.”

  “Er, yes. Poor Priscilla. They were rather blunt, weren't they? Never mind. You're not there to be liked. Like the pantomime demon. You've got a job to do, and you're bound to upset some people. How about a little lipstick?”

  “I'm sorry, I don't have any black.”

  “Don't be silly. Here, take some of this. You don't want Trehearne to think he's got you beaten, do you? Now, are you sure this brooch is straight? The Major was going to get her hair done last night as well. I hope she hasn't done anything stupid. Wasn't Susan quiet yesterday? I think she really feels those terrible stories. Good. Now come on or we shall be late. I've got a chauffeur coming in just a moment.”

  The pavement outside the cinema was bedlam. A helpful policeman fended off the reporters to let them get out of their car. Priscilla had never seen anything like it. She had the impression that she was cornered by a crowd of mad basketball players. Everyone was so tall that she could hardly see the sky as they pressed in on her. She struggled to the cinema doors squeaking, “No comment, no comment!” but it did not seem to put her tormentors off.

  She made it eventually, and just before she reached the relative calm of the foyer, she turned and gave them something for their hard work. “We've got some terrible things to discuss today. Absolutely depraved and degrading. Now I'm going to show you Trehearne as he really is.”

  They ushered her away from the auditorium, but she peeped through the heavy curtains anyway. The stage was an island of light far below. In the dim house lighting, she could make out the audience. In spite of the hour, there seemed to be very few empty seats. Ice-cream sellers stood in the aisle doing brisk business.