“It is.” I reached out with just the fingertips of my right hand and followed the path of the scar on his face. Lightly, so lightly, I traced it from his hairline, down across his cheek, to where it ended at his strong jawline.
He’d flinched at the first touch of my fingers there, but now stared at me with wide eyes. I let my fingers trace back up the other side of his face, the untarnished side, stopping first to let the pads of my fingers caress his lips. He had beautiful lips, full and kissed by the brightness of his powers.
I rose on tiptoe to touch my own lips, darkly rouged, to press against his own. And gasped at the wave of power that shimmered from his lips into my own, down my body, to pool at the juncture of my thighs.
Gareth had grabbed hold of my arms, but at my sound none-to-gently pushed me away.
“See, Lilith, I repulse you. You have no business here, being with me. You are afraid. Of me. Damn it.” He turned away, but not before I saw the pure sorrow in his eyes.
I reached out my hand to touch his shoulder, but he tried to brush it away. I grabbed onto his jaw and forced him to look at me.
“I do not fear you, Sun Warlock, nor am I the least bit repulsed. Did you not feel the power between us when our lips touched?”
He was torn, she could see it. He was physically aroused, his erection jumping against the hard plane of his stomach, but his eyes were so scared, so full of wanting that he was afraid would not be realized.
“I felt it, Priestess.” He ran a hand through his golden hair as he glanced away from me. “You don’t understand, Lilith.” He took a deep breath and turned back to face me. “For years, I have lived with the knowledge that most people fear me. No woman has graced my bed for more time than I can remember. And you know why. Women fear me, Lilith, fear my scar, fear my powers, fear the passion they can see in my eyes.”
“Gareth.” His name was but a whisper upon my lips. “I can see your passion, and I am not afraid. No, I long to feel that same passion, long to see it reflected in my own eyes. It is past time, I believe, for you and I to begin our healing.”
I didn’t break from his gaze as I slowly walked backwards, until I knew I was inside the circle he had used to attempt his summons of a succubus. There was no magical power here now, nothing but the low thrum of my own power, and that I felt radiating from Gareth.
“Come, Gareth, and lie with me. I am no succubus, but I have needs and desires as great as your own. Come to me, Gareth.”
I watched the indecision pass over his face. I saw him struggle, as he wondered if I meant what I said. As he remembered the demons of his own past, at what had happened the last time he’d lain with a woman.
And I saw desire and lust and passion win out as he stepped towards me. He needed my touch as much as I needed his, and tonight, on the eve of Samhain, perhaps we could bring more than sexual release to each other.
* * * *
She wasn’t frightened of me. She desired me, wished for the same type of release that I did. Looking into her dark eyes as I knelt at her feet, I saw lust and passion. Lilith, Wiccan Priestess, wasn’t here tonight as a member of my coven, as a Priestess to lead me in my rituals, but simply as a woman looking for sexual release.
With me.
I felt so many emotions—desire, fear, a reversed sort of empathy for the pain she must have dealt with since Conroy’s death. She had grieved for over six years, and although it wasn’t as long for her as it had been for me, who was I to judge loneliness and need by the passing of the seasons?
Our situations were not the same, and yet they were. As I lay my head against her belly, inside the circle that I had prepared for another type of joining, I realized that Lilith and I were a lot alike. Lonely and alone, yet not really loners. Sad and sorrowful, and yet not that way by nature. We shared needs, and desires, and tonight those same qualities could bring us both passion beyond what we’d experienced in too many years to count.
I licked a path of fire around her bellybutton and rejoiced in her sharp intake of breath. The springy curls above her womanhood were soft against my face as I kissed her abdomen, gently kneeling before her to worship the offering that was she.
I wanted to do everything for her. Summoning a succubus wasn’t just about having my needs met. Well, yes, it was, but meeting my needs meant more than lying there while a woman rode me until I was dry and no longer needy.
When I had been with Moira, so many years ago, some of the best times had been during my pleasuring of her. Any man who doesn’t gain pleasure by bringing his woman to orgasm is a fool. Hearing a woman’s moans, her pants and sharply indrawn breath as you bring her to the peak of her desire again and again—those moments are just as pleasurable as reaching your own orgasm.
What I desired now, more than anything, was to bring pleasure to Lilith that she would not soon forget. I raised myself up until my mouth could reach her breasts, those mounds of flesh with their dark nipples standing firm and stiff in the night air. I licked gently around her aureoles, using my hands to reshape her breasts. I rolled my eyes up to see her head fall back, reveled in the sensation of her hands in my hair as she pushed herself harder against me.
When my teeth sucked the nipple of her left breast into my mouth, the moan she made was almost worth the wait of being with a woman. She was glorious, all dark and mysterious under the light of a full moon, the black curtain of her hair reaching past her knees with her head thrown back that way.
I sucked harder on her nipple as I let my hands work their way across the smooth satin of her back, down to the curves of her ass, down farther to caress the backs of her thighs. Shifting attention to her other breast, I felt her hands like feathers caress my face—the unscarred side of me, then the scarred, with no hesitation between the two.
When her breathing was fast and ragged with desire, I allowed myself the pleasure of her lips. Tongues stroked against each other as my body thrust against hers, wildly and without thought. Her hands were upon me as she opened her mouth to allow me further entry. Touching everywhere, anywhere, that I could reach, I drank her in as if she was the very lifeblood that I needed to survive.
Kissing her was as magical as any ritual of the sun I had ever participated in. She was darkness and I was light, and I felt our powers mixing, swirling, rushing from her mouth to my own, then back again.
“Lie down with me, Lilith, and let me taste you.”
She smiled at me, and it was brighter, more brilliant, than any shield of light I had ever wrapped myself in. She lay upon the grass, in the circle I had made only hours earlier, and held her arms up to me in supplication.
Oh, to see the look of passion and lust on a woman’s face, to see no hesitation as I lowered myself between her spread legs. She wasn’t repulsed by me; in fact, she knew my intentions as I settled between her thighs, and with the first touch of my tongue upon her swollen clit, she screamed into the night.
It was glorious. She was glorious. I was hard with arousal, and the taste of her, bathed in moonlight without this former circle of power, was almost enough to cause me to spill my side onto the ground.
I licked her, massaged her, tasted her. For the first time in over nineteen years, my mouth was upon the most beautiful and sensitive parts of a woman, and it was my salvation.
“Please, Gareth, please.” I wasn’t sure she knew what she was asking for, but I did. I knew. There were many things I had tried to forget over these many long years, but the needs of a woman in the throes of passion were not one of them.
I clasped the sensitive nub of her clit between my teeth, sucking it into my mouth. Her hips thrust up from the ground, and her nails bit painfully into my shoulders. She had drawn blood, I could feel the trails of it as it traversed my back, and I sucked harder, pushing my face harder against her, lifting her from the ground to press against my face.
When orgasm came, I felt her power spill over me in a wash of dark colors. She screamed my name, and it echoed through the clearing, drifted up into the
night, and flew down the bluff to join with the ocean.
It was only when I rode the entire wave of her climax, when her hips finally stilled against my hands, that I slowly lowered her back to the ground.
Then I raised myself up until I could see into those brown eyes, the ones that held so much and told me everything I needed to know.
I could learn to love Lilith, and Lilith, I believe, could come to love me in return.
I felt my powers sizzling along my skin, a light shine to my body that was brighter even than the moon.
I wanted to bury myself within her, to spread her thighs wide and feel her legs wrap around my waist, then my shoulders, as I buried myself to the hilt into her waiting fire.
But as I watched her, as the glaze of her climax slowly fled from her eyes, I was more afraid than I could ever remember being.
I knew what could happen, what very well might happen, if I plunged into her, headlong into the abyss of feelings and sensations that could cause my powers to explode outside the realm of my protective inner shields.
And I was frightened.
Lilith seemed to know, to understand. “It will be all right, Gareth.” Her hands were gentle upon me—my chest, around my nipples, up my neck and across my face. “I know that which you fear.”
And when I looked at her, I realized she did know. She knew what had happened with Moira, that when I had lost control, the building we were in had caught fire from my unrestrained powers. That I had escaped, and Moira had not. That I had killed, although inadvertently, the woman who meant more to me than life itself.
Tears filled my eyes, and I didn’t try to hide them from her.
“Gareth,” she said, and her voice was but a whisper upon the very air I breathed. “That was many years ago, when you had first come into your power. It was an accident, Gareth, and your control has grown since then.” Her hands were so gentle as she pulled me towards her, as she bent her knees slightly until I was resting between them.
“What happened was an accident, Gareth, and will not happen again.” She’d said that many times now, as if the repeating of it would make it so. As if hearing her say it, over and over again, would ease my guilt, would take the burden on my soul and wipe it away as if it had never been there.
“How can you be so sure?” My voice was tortured, to match my soul. “I killed her, Lilith, as surely as if I had taken my blade and plunged it into her heart.”
“No, Gareth, that is not true, and after almost twenty years of forced solitude, I am sure you know that. Look at me.”
I did, looking at her with her hair spread on the ground like a silk sheet. With her breasts thrust to the night sky, with her legs apart, waiting for me to enter her. I looked, and I saw a woman who knew me—my fears, my wants, my needs. A woman who didn’t fear me for what I looked like, or what I had done. A woman—not a succubus—who knew who and what I was and wanted me anyway.
“It was an accident, Gareth, plain and simple. Lord and Lady know that things in this world happen for a reason, and usually it is one we cannot understand. Losing Conroy almost destroyed me, just as the loss of Moira almost destroyed you.”
Her hands gripped my shoulders as she shifted, slightly, until my cock rested at the opening of her body. I was help there, suspended, between the place I was and the place I wanted to be.
“But we were not destroyed,” Lilith continued, her eyes bright as they stared into mine. “We live still, Gareth, and God and Goddess wish us to take advantage of that, to celebrate it, to hold onto it and never forget.”
Her hips shifted the tiniest bit, and I slipped inside her. I groaned, long and low, at the first feel of her wet and warmth surrounding me.
“We live, Sun Warlock, so that those whom we loved can continue to live through us.”
She was right. I didn’t need a succubus to relieve my pain—what I needed was a woman who understand the truth of me, the workings of my head and heart and soul. What I needed, more than anything, was companionship from someone who shared my truths and beliefs. A woman who would soothe me, and who I could soothe in return. A woman who could cure what ailed me, so that I could provide that same healing touch.
What I needed was exactly what the God and Goddess had given me. I needed Lilith. I had summoned someone to help me, and they had sent Lilith, Wiccan Priestess, but more than that, woman.
I thrust deeply inside of her and took her mouth at the same time. Soon there was nothing but the ground beneath us, the dark night sky above us, the faint sound of the crashing surf somewhere beyond the forest of trees.
There was quickened breathing, and grasping hands, and sharp intakes of ragged breath. There was sweat and movement and the writhing of bodies.
And finally, finally, with a rush of magic so strong it stole the breath totally from my body, there was release.
I cried her name as she cried mine, and the sounds mingled together in an offering to those who had brought us together.
Summoning Lilith, touching her, tasting her, bedding her, was like nothing I had ever experienced before. In this, there was magic. There was healing.
God and Goddess know better than I, and even Lilith, what they are doing. Tomorrow, on the night of Samhain, I shall thank them as never before for their wisdom.
Samhain
The celebration and ritual of Samhain is one of the most sacred. We honor those who have left us, we remember those who have given us life, and we celebrate the fruits that Lord and Lady have seen fit to give us.
The actual words of our ceremony aren’t that different from the private ritual I held for myself last night. As I glanced at those around me, the members of my coven, all naked and shining with magic in the moonlight, awaiting the words I would say, my gaze was constantly drawn to Gareth.
Last night seemed almost like a dream. Our joining was freeing, for both of us. He was a complicated man; I’m sure that if you asked him, he’d say I was a complicated woman.
Sex with Gareth had no comparison. He was a generous lover, always making sure that his partners needs were met before his own. I could not remember the last time that I had given myself over so completely to another person—could not, in fact, remember a time when sexual release had felt so good.
I snuck a glance at him, across the bonfire that separated us, and found him looking straight at me. He smiled, a small twitch of his lips, as the light from the fire seemed to turn his skin translucent. He was beautiful with only the moon's light upon him; in the light of an actual fire, his beauty was increased a hundredfold. A living, breathing sun, staring at me with a different type of fire in his eyes.
We had made no real plans after our joining last night. He’d asked if he could see me again; I had said yes. No where, no when. But I knew, looking at him across that orb of light, that it would be tonight. When my words as Priestess were finished, when God and Goddess, Lord and Lady, had been properly celebrated, I would go to him again—or he would come to me.
Something in my heart loosened as I stared at him, as I prepared in my mind the words I would use to celebrate this most holy of nights. I felt Conroy like a ghost upon my soul, but this time it didn’t hurt. The sharp ache of longing had turned to a dull edge of sadness.
This, I believe, is what Conroy had hoped to accomplish. For me to find someone who could share my pain, understand it, and ease it. Perhaps the Sun Warlock and I had more than one night awaiting us, after all.
I began the ceremony with Gareth’s eyes still upon me, with the magic of his touch and the smell of his skin and the feel of his hands still lingering in my memory. And as I said the words that were not very different from those uttered the night before, I thanked those who were listening, silently, for the gifts that they have given me.
"To the God & Goddess of the Year, the Watchtowers of the North and the elements of Earth, we call upon your wisdom, summon your energy and love to witness this celebration of this passing year, blessings to Samhain and union of spirit."
"To the God and Goddess of the Year, the Watchtowers of the East and the elements of Air, we call upon your wisdom and summon your energy for clear communications to spirit and divine knowledge and understanding."
"To the God and Goddess of the Year, the Watchtowers of the South and the elements of Fire, we call upon your wisdom and summon your energy for purification of mind/body/spirit and the harvest. We ask for your divine protection over all things that we bring forth for review, reassessment and resolution."
"To the God and Goddess of the Year, the Watchtowers of the West and the elements of Water, we call upon your wisdom and summon your energy for examination of our path and progress. For our personal introspection and our spiritual evolution.”
“To the Lord of Samhain we offer our thanks and gratitude for this year. To the Lady of Samhain we give homage to your love and continual light. For the year of the harvest we honor the opportunities, the beauty, and the lessons you have provided. We honor the Lord and Lady, we honor our relatives in spirit, and we honor ourselves on this night, your night of Samhain.”
My eyes never left his for long, during the entire time of my offering. As I lit candles, I glanced at him. As I raised my hands heavenward and offered gifts to my God and Goddess, I felt his gaze upon my naked body.
Oh, yes, I would join with Gareth, Master of the Sun, Sun Warlock, again this night. And if Lord and Lady saw fit, for many nights to come.
Samhain is a time of new beginnings. With Conroy’s help, and, I believe, even that of Moira, I believe that Gareth and I can begin anew.
We will never forget those we have loved and lost. My only hope, as I pass around cakes and ale for the coven’s celebration, as my hand brushes against Gareth’s own as I pass his portion of the feast to him, is that we will honor them with every joining.
As I met his eyes, as our magic flared, I knew that all things were possible.
About the Author
Alayne lives in the heart of Illinois, the state in which she was born and raised and has always resided. She has a wonderful, supportive husband, two eerily intelligent and rambunctious children, and the new-found ability to stay home and write full-time. Between doing book reviews, writing, and being a typical PTO mom, she hopes to keep writing long into the future.
Lillith Summoned Page 3
