A Pagan Connection

Mike looked around at the people dressed in medieval costume and wondered once again what he was doing at a Renaissance Faire. He was there with his camera gear, but he usually didn't take snapshots, and portraits were not his typical subject. He preferred setting up for a nature shot and then waiting for just the right moment of light and mood; rocks and plants never got bored or antsy waiting for him to release the shutter. Generally people were much too involved in their own lives to wait patiently for his muse to whisper to him.

He circled through the faire strolling along the main avenues stopping occasionally to look at the stained glass, rune pendants, fairy dolls, and aromatic oils. He enjoyed the obvious delight the people who dressed in costume had in their avocation and he took the occasional photo. His own khakis, and lime polo shirt seemed very dull in comparison to the leather bucklers, breeches, and plumed hats. He didn't want to make any comparisons at all with the codpieces. He wondered if the people who dressed in period costume had a special name for visitors, like himself, who were just passing through? Now and then he overheard snatches of a role playing exchange like the one a young woman dressed as a serving wench, displaying a pleasing bosom, directed toward pretzel vendor calling him an "artless, common-kissing, boar pig." Then, as now, he decided, inflection determined whether the epithet was insult or flirt.

Toward the end of the road and off to the left he saw a small structure that said "Palm Reading." On a whim he walked over to it and stepped inside. The woman sitting by a small table looked up at him as he approached.

"Would you like your palm read?"

"I'm not sure. It's not something I would normally do." As he said this Mike thought he was already giving away information that the woman could use to make it look as if she had special powers. His eyes and lips moved into an unconscious smile.

"My name is Samantha, and I think you should try something new!" Samantha looked directly into his face and gave him an encouraging smile. "What have you got to lose except $20"?

Mike looked at Samantha and thought she was very attractive and that her smile was as inviting as any he'd noticed in a long time. Her skin was dark; her oval face was framed by short, straight dark, brown hair. She had brown, liquid eyes with an open, friendly look that was both playful and a little challenging. She was wearing a white pull-over blouse with lace cuffs and collar and large turquoise earrings that moved slightly when she spoke.

"What should I expect for my $20"?

"Good, you're not a flirt," Samantha said.

"I beg your pardon."

"You're not a flirt. Most men customers, here at the faire, would have played off the double entendre of your question. You didn't. It was a simple, direct question. I like it that you have enough courtesy not to start flirting with me, before I invite you to, even though you find me attractive." Samantha once again warmed Mike with a generous, open smile.

"How do you know I find you attractive," Mike asked letting a slight tease creep into his voice. "Do you think all men find you attractive?"

"Most who come in for a reading find me attractive, but very few, if they talk at all, make the effort to get to know anything about me. Nature seems to have wired your gender to maximize opportunity and quantity, even if quality is sacrificed." Another of those deep smiles came Mike's way.

Chuckling, Mike said, "I haven't agreed to pay you yet and you're already telling me about myself!"

"A free sample can be just what's needed to close the sale."

Mike was hooked, and he knew it. He fished $20 dollars out of his wallet and handed it to Samantha, "Now what?"

"Sit down and show me your palm. Do you have any questions about your future that you'd like me to address?"

"Not at the moment."

Samantha looked from his palm to his eyes several times. She began by tracing her finger along his upturned palm. "Your lifeline is long and strong; you needn't be concerned about debilitating illnesses." Folding his fingers into a loose fist she looked at the creases on his forefinger from the knuckle to the first joint. "You can expect to have no more than three children, but none of them will be boys." Turning his palm up again she lightly ran the tip of her finger over it stroking the crease where his fingers joined his palm. "You have had one great love in your life. You will have two more. The first one illuminated the depth of your desire, the next one will show you the depth of your passion and teach you how to embrace it, and the last will be your true soul mate."

"I don't understand the difference between passion and desire, and doesn't everyone take the same journey you described?"

"Not everyone has the capacity or the inclination to make the journey. You have both. Desire is like a fire made with kindling and light, dry wood. It ignites easily, burns fiercely, and consumes itself quickly. Desire comes from our physical appetites. Its immediacy leaves no room for fear, caution, or reflection. Passion is like a fire made with dense, hard woods. It ignites slowly, burns with deep intensity, and creates embers that fuel the next cycle. Passion comes from our souls and it easily engenders and can be easily dampened by fear, caution, or reflection."

"I do have one question about my future I would like to ask. Will you have dinner with me?"

Samantha laughed and said, "Now you're flirting. My ability to see into the future tells me that I might like that very much. The faire closes at 8:00; meet me at the front gate at 8:15?"

The late afternoon sun fell across Samantha's face from the left through a small window covered with gauze. The soft light modeled Samantha's face and her luminous, dark eyes transfixed his gaze. His muse's voice was quiet, yet insistent and definite. "Do it, do it." Mike raised his camera, focused, pressed the shutter, and captured Samantha.

That evening, Mike and Samantha sat across from one another in the dining room of the Main Street Hotel.

"Where do you live?"

"My off-season house is in upstate New York. During the season I always get a booth with an attached room. If I'm lucky it will have water and electricity."

"What about, you know, a bathroom?"

"The porta-potties are open 24 hours, but baths are more difficult to come by than they should be in a civilized country."

"You know, I've been thinking about what you said when you read my palm. You could have said that to anybody."

"Think of name of your first love; open your mind to recollection of the feelings you had for her."

Mike did as she asked and a few moments later Samantha said, "Her name was Karen."

"What?"

"Your first great love...her name was Karen."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but one, you're right, and two, it's a little creepy."

Samantha reached across the table and put her hand over Mike's, "Don't let it bother you; it's just a gift I have."

Another one of those cannon ball smiles shot out at Mike and again he heard an insistent voice in his ear, "This one is special. Do it. Do it."

"Are you a witch?" Mike realized that his question was serious; he wasn't joking.

Samantha laughed softly, "No more than you are a wizard."

"I have a room here; would you like to use my tub?"

As they walked to the elevator, they took each other's hand as naturally as if they had made this walk with one another many, many times before, yet their easy familiarity did not dull their anticipation. Intimacy between them was still only a possibility, perhaps even a probability, but not yet a given. Each step, each interaction between them was a mutual choice that served to whet the appetite.

Mike rang room service for fresh towels. While he was waiting he began to straighten his toiletries and generally tidy the small bathroom for anything Samantha might need space for. The towels arrived just as he was finishing and he and Samantha traded places. When he brought the towels in he saw that Samantha had just finished placing some candles and oils she had brought with her on the small surface between the tub and the attached shower. She bent over, started the water and added some bubble bath. The heady aroma of chamomile mixed with lavender filled the small room.

"Do you mind if I watch you bathe?"

"Close the door and turn off the light; the company will be nice. I hope you don't mind the candles and all. I hate to waste the opportunity."

Samantha lit the candles as Mike closed the door and took off her clothes quickly. She turned to face Mike, saying nothing, with her hands at her sides, giving him tacit permission to look. She flashed another of those smiles that Mike already knew he would remember always and miss terribly. Mike gazed unselfconsciously at the swell and slope of her breasts tipped by full nipples and dark areola. He let his gaze fall downward taking in the S curve from chest, to waist, to hips, and then tapering into her long legs. He was mesmerized by the almost black, bushy curls of that sprang from the triangle of her pubic hair. He drank in the utter femaleness of her form that was so strong it overshadowed the sexuality of the moment. Even so, he felt the familiar, sweet heaviness of arousal building in his balls.

In a swift motion, Samantha bent over, used her hand on the edge of the tub to support herself, and stepped into the tub, first one leg and then the other.

Mike loved the way her breasts responded to the pull of gravity and hung down as she bent over. He thrilled at the soft elbow of her back, ass, and thighs as she got ready to step into the bath, and his cock began to thicken as he watched her split her legs to place first one and then the other into the tub. Even though it was impossible to see he imagined the lips between her legs as they spread slightly to accommodate her stepping into the tub.

Mike was not inexperienced, but he had never actually watched a woman simply bathe before. Typically, for him, nakedness was a precursor that just made fucking more convenient. It occurred to Mike that Samantha's sharing of her nakedness in order to bathe wasn't a prelude to anything; it was a gift.

They spoke very little while Samantha soaked. When she began to lift herself out of the bath, Mike got one of the fresh towels and wrapped it around her. He helped her step out of the tub and then started taking off his own clothes for a quick shower.

Samantha was sitting on the edge of the bed, still wrapped in a towel, brushing her hair when Mike walked out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. She stopped when she saw Mike, looked into his eyes, and simply said, "Come here, and show me."

Mike walked over to her and dropped his towel. Samantha looked at the relaxed, uncircumcised penis that hung out of a thick, curly bed of black hair. The length of his flaccid penis stopped just short of the bottom of his dark ball-sack. The head was completely covered by his foreskin, but the ridgeline was clearly visible through the smooth skin. Samantha gazed for a moment then said, "Where is your camera?" Mike pointed to a bag sitting on a chair next to the bed behind Samantha. She swung her legs up and around, took the camera from the bag and returned to her sitting position directly in front of Mike.

"It's automatic," Mike said. "You just point and shoot."

Samantha brought the camera to her eye, framed his genitals, and released the shutter. "Move your feet apart a little." Mike did so and his testicles, which had been resting on his thighs, loose after the warm shower, swung back a little and now hung between his legs not touching his thighs. Samantha moved her head around and looked at Mike, enjoying the way his still soft penis nestled against his balls. She took another picture and set the camera down.

She reached out and cupped Mike's balls in the palm of her hand, feeling the weight and heft of them letting her long fingers curve around behind them and caress the wrinkled sack with her fingertips. She continued her intent explorations feeling up into the crease where the sack joined Mike's legs.

Mike found himself surprisingly unselfconscious at Samantha's almost clinical examination and felt himself begin to stir. Samantha noticed the thickening of Mike's penis and how it moved away from his testicles slightly as Mike experienced the beginnings of arousal. She took another picture. She moved the fingers of her other hand between his penis and testicles and let her palm travel up the front of his sack and lift his shaft. She curled her fingers around it and felt the softness hardening as the sensations on the underside of his cock registered in Mike's brain. His arousal quickened as Samantha let her fingers play along the length of him, coaxing it into a semi-erection. She took more pictures.

Mike savored the intimacy of Samantha's touch as she continued to fondle his balls and stroke his penis. It was deeply erotic and intimate, leaving his most sensitive area vulnerable and exposed. Samantha continued to fondle his balls and stroke his shaft, gently bringing it to full erection. Mike's rigid cock angled up from his groin seeming to grow directly out of his balls which hung underneath potent and full. The head of his penis was now partially visible escaping the pouch of his foreskin. The area below the small slit glistened with the fluid that had started to ooze out of him. Samantha took more pictures. Mike felt his cock yearning for the warm, wet envelopment he enjoyed so much.

Samantha began to use both hands to caress his testicles from the creases where they joined his legs, around the back, and across the front, cupping them, feeling them, weighing them, and rolling them between her fingers. And, as if in a gravitational pull, her mouth kept moving closer to him. Closer and closer until he could feel the warmth of her moist, fevered exhales on his tip.

She simultaneously pulled his foreskin back and took his swollen head into her mouth. Mike's overloaded nervous system registered pleasure, fulfillment, desire, lust, impatience, longing, restraint, need, urgency, and pure joy as Samantha swirled her relaxed tongue around the head of this cock. Samantha reveled in the contrast between the soft sponginess of his tautly swollen head and the steel underneath. She savored the difference between the slickness of her own saliva and Mike's pre-seminal fluid.

She began to work her mouth slowly up and down his shaft, each time taking more of him in. Her tongue continued to move sideways across the underside of his shaft. Each time her mouth got to about an inch from the tip she paused briefly and let her tongue work slowly on Mike's underside.

Now fully aroused, Mike felt the physical stimulation of Samantha's mouth edging him closer to that point where release was unstoppable. Each of the quick licks of her tongue sent a bolt of fire down into his testicles, edging him closer to uncontrollable ejaculation. Samantha pulled her mouth slowly off Mike's penis and asked simply, "Can you wait?"

In answer, Mike leaned down and loosened Samantha's towel as he pushed her down onto the bed, covered her body with his, and kissed her deeply, their tongues and lips joining in a flurry of sensation and exploration. They moved up the bed so that they could lie facing each other at full length so close to one another that Samantha's breasts brushed against Mike's chest and his erection brushed against her legs and hips. Each random touch painted the other's body with fire. His kisses covered her ears and neck and the hollow just above her collarbone. His lips and tongue travelled to her breasts, nuzzling her nipples, the sides, the tops, and the bottoms of her breasts moving to the sides of her torso and up to her mouth where their lips and tongues caressed each other. He moved his kisses downward again, pausing briefly at her nipples and then down lower to her belly. He buried his nose in her pubic hair letting her musky scent elevate his arousal even further. He ached with desire. His tongue found the engorged rod of her clitoris and plied it with warm, wet licks.

She opened her legs allowing him, wanting him to access her center. He did not make her wait. His mouth found her upper thighs and he licked the crease between her vulva and her legs while her flowing lubrication bathed his chin and nose foretelling the fulfillment that was to come. He used his tongue to separate her lips with long licks from the base of her opening to the nub at the tip of her lightening rod. He reveled in her taste and her odor and flicked her exposed clitoris with his soft, darting tongue. She opened herself completely to him and allowed her body to respond to his lovemaking without reservation thereby cuing him how to inflame her arousal even further. She had no apprehension as her mind passed the point where rational thought was extinguished. She entered a timeless realm of pure sensation devoid of logic. He fed her fire, stoking it, in awe of it, ignited by it.

When Samantha was completely open, she reached down and took his head in her hands, pulling his mouth up to hers and encircled his waist with her legs, rotating her pelvis up in simultaneous demand and surrender. The head of his penis found her opening and he entered her in one smooth stroke. She felt him slip deeply into her until the thick root of his engorged cock was snugly gripped by her swollen, receptive sex. They each began to move in ways that their desire demanded and that brought each of them closer to the ecstasy of release. Their spirits were mindful of each other, but their bodies were each on a mindless quest for completion. Time lost its direction, thought was replaced by sensation, and finally sensation was overcome by pulsing, explosive, consuming, electric spasms as each was lost in a universe that collapsed into their genitals then flooded out to the tips of their fingers and toes. As his seed flooded deep into her receptive core he heard his involuntary grunts of physical need fulfilled punctuated by her sharp, staccato cries of affirmation as her rhythmic contractions squeezed his spurting shaft.

Slowly Mike and Samantha grew aware of the deep, gasping breaths of the other that affirmed the pagan connection they had just shared. Their fucking had made love between them. They had touched each other's souls and the touched spot would forever bear the mark of the other.