I’ve already made my protective circle with a white cord, and an outer circle of protection made with crushed herbs. I have five black candles spaced equidistant apart inside the inner circle, with my five talismans outside of it. The talismans—one for good fortune, one for success in my ritual, one for happiness, and two crystals symbolizing a wizard at work and a couple engaging in sex—were placed beside the five candles on the outside of my inner circle.
It was time to enter the inner circle and summon the succubus. I had no wish for true love, no desire to find a woman who would fulfill all of my fantasies and be my partner in life. All I wished, on this eve of Samhain, was for a woman—spirit, demon, or a mixture of the two—to come to me and take away the longing that I felt.
I entered naked and sat down in the middle of the circle. I focused myself, which is hard to do away from the power of the sun that usually guides my hand of power. But I needed to fully separate myself from the woods around me, from the ground beneath me, from the breeze that carried the scent of the ocean to my nose.
It might have been minutes, or it could possibly have been hours. Regardless of how long it took, I finally felt centered, more alone than I can ever remember being. I lit all five of the candles, and lay upon the hard ground in the pentagram position with my arms straight out from my side and my legs apart.
There are no magical words to summon a succubus. Everyone who has ever done it—whether they’ve succeeded or failed—uses their own words of magic and power to call this sentient being to them.
My words echoed through the trees that were quickly losing all of their leaves.
“God and Goddess, on this night before the most holy of nights, please grant my wish for sexual release. Please send to me one of Thy servants, to ease my longing and need. Help me to let go of my pain of the last years, and to start anew for the coming year. Please hear my plea, Lord and Lady, and grant your humble servant his one remaining wish.”
I watched as my words drifted up towards the night sky, and the almost full moon. I listened to myself as I told the powers-that-be about my needs, my longings, my desire to be filled, for this night, with the healing power of touch from a being who would not be disgusted with my scars, who would expect nothing from me, and who would release my pent-up desires through the most basic act of sex.
I heard the words drift away, and I closed my eyes against the mocking of the moon. The breeze died down, and my skin grew warm, even without the energies of the sun.
I was as calm and peaceful as I could be. My ritual was done, and the only thing left to do now was wait.
So I closed my eyes and focused on the small flames from the candles, whose light flickered against my closed lids. I held on to the belief that she would come, and I waited.
Summons
“Go to the Sun Warlock, he says. Ease his pain and allow him to ease your own. Bullshit.” I normally refrained from cursing, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
I’d hastily thrown a black cloak over my nakedness after I’d placed my candle in the window of my home. I didn’t want to go to him. I freely admitted it, and part of me continued to curse Conroy as I followed the path that would lead from my land to the warlock’s.
We were neighbors. It’s amazing that two people who live so close would actually be strangers. Our houses were the only two on this particular patch of land above the sea. We belonged to the same coven, believed in the same God and Goddess, celebrated the same holidays with the same brethren.
And were total opposites, in every way that mattered.
As I slowly made my way towards the house that Gareth called home—slowly, so deliberately slowly—I admitted to myself that I purposely avoided him whenever I could. Contrary to what some people might think, it wasn’t his scarred face that kept me from his company. It wasn’t even his powers, although I had heard stories of exactly what those powers could do.
I even know why he lived alone, why he felt alone, why he had no female companion—and hadn’t for many, many years. I knew the horror of what had befallen Gareth the Sun Warlock, but even that fact wasn’t why I kept my distance.
I avoided him, if at all possible, because looking into his eyes with their pain, sorrow, and misery was too much like looking into a mirror and seeing my own reflection.
He had loved and lost. Loved strong and deeply, and lost swiftly and terribly. His pain reminded me too much of the burden I carried in my own heart. When you live life only trying to get through the next day, surrounded by pain and grief that holds physical feeling, it’s too hard to be around others who feel the same.
I know for a fact that he mistook my understanding of his grief as pity. I’m sure he thought that I was repulsed by his scar. There are many, even in our own coven, who do pity him, who are repulsed by his physical appearance. I am not one of them, but I’ve never taken the time to explain that to him.
To explain would mean that I would have to tell him why I understand, all too well, exactly how he feels. It would mean opening my own wounds, laying myself bare to his exploration—and I’ve never felt strong enough to do that.
Why couldn’t Conroy have just eased my fears of spending the rest of my life alone, without the comfort of love? Why didn’t he tell me that things would be all right, that my life path would straighten itself out in its own due time?
Why, God and Goddess, did he tell me to go to Gareth? How could we possibly ease each others pain?
Now it didn’t matter why, because I was at the woods that bordered the Sun Warlock’s property. As I entered deeper into the trees that hid his home from view, I saw the flicker of candles through the almost bare branches.
I was almost upon him before I saw him. He was engaged in his own ritual, as I should have known he would be. Most Wiccans did some type of personal cleansing or ritual before the actual Samhain activities.
I stood silent a few yards from his protective circle, and couldn’t stop the way my heart sped up and my palms turned slightly damp. If my body tightened low in my belly, if my nipples stood up hard against the material of my cloak, I blamed it on the chill of the night wind.
There was nothing repulsive about Gareth. He lay, silent and unmoving, within his circle. The arms straight out at his sides were golden, reflecting the light of the moon, giving him a slight glow as he lay there. His eyes were closed, but I knew that when he opened them, they would be two orbs of brilliant blue, with irises the same golden color as his skin.
The scar really did nothing to take away from his pleasing appearance. His face was all hard lines and angles, a strong nose that I’d once heard described as Roman, and lips that were so full and ripe that they looked like sun-kissed fruit.
I told myself that I wasn’t trespassing, wasn’t spying, as I allowed my gaze to travel across his chest. He was muscular, more so than I would have ever noticed when we were among others. A light sprinkling of hair, darker in color than the golden curls of his head, arrowed down to his groin.
I blamed the pounding of my heart and the thrum inside my veins on the night and the magic that I could feel. I knew, even as I did so, that I was lying. Gareth was beautiful, naked and shining in the moonlight. His penis was full and thick, fully aroused as it lay against the firm skin of his belly. His thighs looked powerful, even in rest. I found the sight of his feet, with their pale heels and arches, unbelievably arousing.
He was naked, and the fact did not escape me that under my cloak, so was I.
* * * *
I knew, when I heard the very human footsteps crackling over the leaves as she approached, that this was no succubus come to rescue me. It would seem my ritual was for not, that the God and Goddess had not seen fit to answer my pleas.
I should have expected it, but it still hurt. Hurt, more than angered, and that told me just how far gone I was when it came to needing, wanting, sexual release.
I even knew who it was standing just a few feet away from my protective circle. Lilith, the Wi
ccan Priestess, the one woman who never looked at me with apprehension or pity. No, her understanding, her knowledge of me and my pain, was much worse.
She lived only minutes away. We worshipped together, celebrated together—but spoke only to each other when necessary. She didn’t dislike me, or even fear me. I don’t think she pitied me, in the way that others did. No, she was empathetic of me—and that, somehow, was a hundred times worse.
My body was still aroused, my member still hard at attention. I was sure that when the synapses from my brain finally fired in its direction, that it realized it wasn’t about to get the sexual release it so desperately craved, that it would go back to its regular state.
Right now, though, I still wanted, and my body still ached with the need for satisfaction.
I opened my eyes, and my gaze immediately fell upon Lilith. She was beautiful, there was no way around that. Not bright and shining beauty, like Moira had possessed, but a dark beauty that made her all that more desirable.
My throat had closed up at the thought of Moira, as it almost always did. But tonight, with my eyes upon Lilith and her dark chocolate eyes, her black stream of hair, her dark skin that shone in the moonlight, the images that usually followed the thought of Moira were strangely absent.
“You might as well come closer, Lilith, and tell me why you’ve come.” As the ceremony was obviously over, as my wish was not to be granted, I extinguished the candles and closed my circle. My eyes once again alit upon Lilith, who was still standing silently a few feet away, her left hand closed at the throat of her cloak, as if she were either cold or afraid.
I knew she wasn’t cold, as the night wind had died down, and the smell of the sea was no longer drifting up to the clearing. And even though she may have been wary, I knew that she was not afraid. She was one of the few who had never—even after Moira’s death—been afraid of me.
I didn’t know what to make of her silence, or even her presence in the clearing.
“You have no ritual to make tonight?” I walked towards her as I asked, watching as those dark brown eyes widened, in something like surprise. It seemed to take her a moment to find her breath, and the ability to answer me.
“Ritual was already done, Gareth, Master of the Sun, and offerings were made and accepted.”
“Good, good.” I stood only a foot away from her now, with no shame in my nakedness. No shame at all, it would seem, even though I had never been in her company without the rest of our brethren. I had also her nude more times than I could count, but somehow, tonight, even shrouded with her cloak, her beauty was more appealing than I could ever remember.
“Greetings, Lilith, High Priestess of Wicca, revered one of the God and Goddess. To what do I owe this visit?” My voice wasn’t strained, although it took all of my willpower to keep from reaching out and smoothing the furrow that had been made between her brows as she frowned.
Lilith glanced away, towards my circle, and her reply was but a whisper. “I was sent to you, Master of the Sun. Summoned, as you will.”
My breath hitched and I felt my hands ball into fists. It was my turn to look away. My words came out much harsher than I had intended. “Nonsense. That’s not true. The God and Goddess would not have sent you, Lilith, for that would be a laugh in my direction.”
Her brown eyes shone with anger. “You find me insulting, Gareth?” She made it a question, but the words were layered with a fine sheen of ice. Lilith was all fire and brimstone, but her voice was as cold as the hard frost that covered this clearing in the deep months of winter.
“I do not find you insulting, Lilith. I summoned someone, yes, but it most definitely was not you.”
“And who did you summon so that I would be but a pale substitute?” Her gaze bored into mine; she, clothed in her cloak, and I naked and still fully aroused under the light of the moon.
Pale substitute? No, Lilith would never be second choice, to anyone in anything. But I had asked for a succubus, someone to use their sexual powers upon me until I forget everything around me. Lilith was not second place—she was just not what I had asked for.
I suddenly did not want to tell her who, or what, I had summoned. I didn’t want her anger, did not want her to think that I was disregarding her or her beauty, but I didn’t want to see that same empathy that she usually reserved for me in her eyes.
Lilith angry, with fire in her eyes and ice in her voice, was much more desirable than Lilith with sorrow and empathy in every breath of her being.
“Does it matter?” My words were haughty, and I turned fully away from her to remove the candles from my circle. My ritual had obviously failed, so there was no more need for them.
“Yes, Gareth, I believe it matters very much. But if I am reading your circles correctly, understanding your candle positions and protective talismans, not to mention your nakedness, I can deduce on my own who you have summoned. Are you a fool, Sun Warlock? Do not tell me you don’t know the dangers involved in summoning a succubus. And yet you would stand here and disregard my summons?” Her voice was no longer like ice. No, she’d warmed up during her speech, and her words now fell upon my bare back as I was turned away from her like the brimstone fires of Hell.
“How dare you?” I asked, turning back and walking towards her. “How dare you stand there, righteous from your own successful ritual, and lecture me on the dangers of my own? Do you know what it’s like, Lilith, do you really, fully understand, how desperate for human touch a man has to be to attempt to summon a succubus?”
I was close to her now, until our bodies were almost touching. I reached out a hand to her hair, pushing it back behind her ears, then trailing my fingertips along her forehead, her brow, her cheek, to finally rest against her lips. “Do you know, Lilith, what it’s like to need the touch of someone so badly that it’s a physical hurt? To need the feeling of being a part of someone else, with your body buried inside another being until you can’t tell where you leave off and the other begins?”
I stepped even closer, until I could tell that she was naked under the cloak. I felt her nipples push against my bare chest, felt the curls at the juncture of her thighs align with my own. I shamelessly pushed my erection against her, rejoicing in her sharp intake of breath.
“Do you see now, Lilith, why I would be so desperate?” I roughly pushed myself away from her, turning towards the path that would take me, and my desire, back home.
I had only taken three steps when I heard her call to me.
“I understand desperation, Gareth, more than you could possibly know. I know the desire to be whole again, to be body to body, soul to soul with someone who can fill you from the inside out. I know, Sun Warlock, and I believe now that this understanding is the reason I was sent to you.”
I turned back to the sound of her voice, to the desire that I heard there. More importantly, to the true understanding that her words brought to me.
She stood naked and dark in the moonlight, her cloak at her feet, staring at me with daring in her eyes, with determination in her stance.
“You summoned a succubus, Master of the Sun, and the God and Goddess saw fit to send me in her place. I think, if you allow me the chance, that you might begin to understand that I am no poor substitute.”
I stared at the thrust of her breasts, at the dark curls covering her most secret of places, and back up at her face.
Could it be possible, with all that was holy, that in summoning a succubus I had actually summoned Lilith?
I did not know. What I did know, right this moment, was that I would take what she offered, would lay her down upon the ground awash with the glow of the moon, and bury myself inside of her until I could no longer feel my own pain, like needles under my skin.
Redemption
I had no idea what I was doing. What possessed me to throw off my cloak, to let it fall to my feet so I stood naked in a clearing behind Gareth’s home? Had I gone crazy?
Part of me felt that I had, indeed, lost my mind. The other part,
the part that craved sexual release and the touch of a man upon my body, knew exactly what it was doing.
Did Conroy have this in mind when he sent me here? He had to have known—or at least the God and Goddess had to have known—what the Sun Warlock was attempting to do. What he wanted, what he wished to accomplish. So sending me here in response to his plea had to have been planned by someone with an agenda much different than my own.
Standing naked only feet from Gareth’s failed ritual circle was most definitely not what I had planned. But God and Goddess knew that what you planned wasn’t always what came to pass.
Conroy floated into her mind, the soft feel of his hands upon her breast, the feel of his lips against her throat—but this time, the remembering didn’t cause pain. It didn’t cause her heart to miss a beat and her throat to close up. Instead, it was a peaceful remembering of things that once were, but were no more. His words echoed through her head, and she knew she was doing the right thing. She was living, as he wanted her to do. And she needed to make Gareth realize that living would not tarnish the memory of those who no longer were.
He’d come back to stand in front of her. His naked body glowed softly, whether from the light of the moon or the energy he’d harnessed from the daylight hours she didn’t know.
Strong features, a pleasant chest lightly covered with bronze hair, strong thighs leading to feet that could only be described as manly. Gareth’s hands were in fists at his side, and a look was in his eyes—part longing, part wariness, mostly desire.
“Is this what you wish?” His voice was full of hope, with a lacing of rejection. He was positive that she would change her mind.
Lillith Summoned Page 2
