Eesha's Wedding Day

The water was cool on their ankles as they stepped out and pulled the boat higher on the small beach. They had canoeed together before and no words were necessary as they secured the craft.

It was their wedding day, but only they knew it. Oh, in a few weeks there would be celebrations and back slapping aplenty. To their families and friends, that would be their wedding day. But here, under the tall evergreens, on a Muscoca island in summer, they had come to enact their own ancient marriage rite.

They were barefoot and he had removed his shirt. Though it had been an arduous row, she remained in her shorts and t-shirt. In his light hearted way, he teased her to take her top off too. They had been naked together once or twice, but the attitudes of their mutual upbringing clung a little more strongly to her, and so she stayed dressed while they clambered up onto the flat, mossy rocks.

Both of their families had emigrated from the Middle East when religion and politics had begun to simmer dangerously. Eesha and Abe had been raised in Canada and lived like their friends, but the traditions of their ancestry tugged at them in complex ways. This ambiguity was something they shared.

As wedding plans whirled around them, they felt increasingly alienated. So they had canoeed to this beautiful island, far from any observer: bringing sacred texts, open minds, a sense of reverence, and their intoxicating desire for one another.

They had slept together before but never with much time or privacy. Eesha did not share her parents' view that a woman who slept with men before she married was cheap, but still, she knew she was not as experienced as some of her friends. They had spoken little on the trip, preferring to paddle in silence through the serene, tree-lined lake. Now, they avoided each other's eyes, feeling almost shy.

"Looks flat enough here," Abe said, indicating a large gentle depression in the moss covered rock.

Silently, she began preparing. She flung a large quilt on the spot he had pointed to and laid out objects on it—incense, a flask of wine, a small, fragrant pine bough.

Abe watched her as she moved, marveling that this sexy, curvaceous woman was his, preparing to join with him. She had done a lot of reading and had devised a wedding that drew on some ancient traditions from the culture of their ancestors, and some more modern practices of Paganism. He thought it was all a bit wacky, but it mattered to Eesha, and he sure wasn't into all that catering and costuming crap.

Eesha walked slowly around the quilt with lit incense, circling once then stepping into the middle. She beckoned and Abe stepped toward her.

"We should swim," she said. "It's hot and we can wash." Her tone and manner were unusually distant, but as she raised her arms, inviting him to undress her, he saw a glimpse of her mischievous smile, reminding him of other, more hurried disrobings.

He took off her clothes and she his, but when he would have reached for her, she stepped gently away. Naked, she turned and ran down the rocks to the water. Hypnotized by the sight of her behind as she ran into the lake, he followed more slowly. He had never seen her naked in daylight. They came close together in the water, but again when he reached for her, she slid gently from him.

When they had dried one another playfully, they returned to the makeshift altar. They stood silently for a moment, gazing around them at the tall trees, smelling the aromatic pine resin, feeling the breeze on their skin. Then Eesha picked up a sheet of paper and began to read.

The text was from an ancient hymn of the Goddess, thousands of years old. It told the story of the Goddess Inanna consummating the Sacred Marriage with the shepherd God Dumuzi. Eesha had a low, even, rich voice, and she spoke with deliberation.

"Inanna bathed and anointed herself with scented oil. She covered her body with the royal white robe. She arranged precious lapis beads around her neck. She took her seal in her hand. Dumuzi looked at her joyously. He pressed his neck close to hers. He kissed her."

Eesha looked up then, smiling a little at the poetry, but Abe came and embraced her and began to kiss her. This time she didn't try to elude him. Instead, she reached her arms around his neck and pressed her body against his.

As their lips moved hungrily, his hands slid down her back, molding over her hips, cupping her breasts. She pushed herself against him while she explored the muscles of his back. She could feel his erection pressing against her, and she slid down until she was kneeling before him.

She placed her hands on either side of his rigid cock and began moving them lightly over the hot flesh. She knelt on the ground, running her hands over the planes and angles of his legs, his stomach, his hard penis so close to her. How beautiful he is, she thought, and laid her cheek against the hot surface. She began kissing him, moving her tongue around his shaft, resting the head inside her mouth, caressing him wonderingly with her hands.

She sat back on her heels, keeping one hand on his hip as she prepared to read again. She smiled up into his eyes, started moving her hand in slow patterns on his flesh and enveloped him with her low voice.

"At the king's lap stood the rising cedar. Plants grew high by their side. Grains grew high by their side. Gardens flourished luxuriantly.

Inanna sang: He has sprouted, he has burgeoned; he is lettuce planted by the water. He is the one my womb loves best. My well stocked-garden of the plane, my barley growing high in its furrow, my apple tree which bears fruit up to its crown. My honey-man, my honey-man sweetens me always."

She took him as far into her mouth as she could now, holding her hands firmly on his ass, pulling him into her. One part of her sniggered at the flowery language of the story. Another part felt the poetry in her mind and body, and that part was growing stronger.

She felt a deep excitement rising in her, but she understood that his excitement was urgent and immediate. He had his hands on her shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh as he felt her strong tongue lapping at him. She had never done this to him before, but as his surprise gave way to driving sensation, he moved his hands to her head and began thrusting more powerfully into her mouth. The force of his pleasure gave her the stamina to keep her rhythm strong and even, while his body quivered and his swollen cock squirted hot fluid down her throat.

She felt happy as he collapsed onto the quilt beside her and embraced her fiercely. He laid quick, exuberant kisses on her cheeks, her forehead, her hair, her lips, laughing down at her in delight.

She sat up and reached for the flask of wine. She opened it, poured a small amount onto the thick moss, then drank. Abe took the flask from her where he lay, and drank also. As she corked it again and set it aside, she noticed that he was singing. He was a cheerful person to be around, and often sang to himself, so she took little notice, distracted as she was by his hand caressing her thigh. Then she realized he was singing an old Arabic wedding song. It was a tune familiar to both of them from family weddings, and it evoked strong memories and emotions in her. It was a song none of their Anglo friends would have recognized, but alone with him here on their wedding day, it seemed perfect to her.

As he sang, his eyes roamed freely and possessively over her naked body. She felt an impulse as she answered his gaze. Slowly, she rose from beneath his hand and stood. Her hips began to make small circles which swayed into graceful figure eights. Her hands began to trace sinuous patterns in the air before her but, far from obscuring her body; they subtly accented its flowing movements.

In answer to his song, she recalled the dance of women from her childhood. Her mother, her aunts, her female cousins would all dance at family gatherings, the old dance of the Middle East. Eesha had mostly given up Eastern dance when she became a teenager, and fitting in became important to her. Now, naked before her lover, the serpentine movements came back to her with new and intoxicating meanings.

He smiled broadly and sat up, still singing. As he might have done at a traditional wedding, he began to clap in time to his singing, a slow, even rhythm for her to follow, and she did.

His eyes were riveted on the undulations and twists of her torso, the sway of her breasts, the powerful circles made by her hips, the graceful, hypnotic waves that rippled through her arms to her delicate hands. Gradually, he began to speed up the song and the rhythmic clapping. She followed his tempo, began to whirl and spin, to move her hips in large circles, falling forward at the waist and flinging her long hair around in front of her so that it swept the ground before him.

The movements came back to her with the kind of body memory she associated with riding a bike. Now, however, as an awakened woman, she felt them as she never had before. She knew, at a gut level, what this dance meant to women. It seemed that the movements were opening a flowering thing inside her. It felt as if the Earth was sending some primal force up through her feet and into her body.

Finally, Abe jumped up and cried out "No more woman!" in such a completely Anglo way that she started to laugh. She fell to the ground gasping for breath from her exertion, still laughing. Before he could seize her, she slithered away to reach for the last of the sacred text they had brought. As she began to read, she was still breathless.

"Inanna spoke: 'What I tell you let the singer weave into song. What I tell you, Let it flow from ear to mouth; Let it pass from old to young: My vulva, the horn, The Boat of Heaven, Is full of eagerness like the young moon. My untilled land lies fallow. As for me, Inanna, Who will plow my vulva? Who will plow my high field? Who will plow my wet ground?'"

Eesha handed the sheet to Abe and lay on her back, watching him intently as he read in a low, intense voice, serious for once. "Dumuzi replied: 'Great Lady, the king will plow your vulva. I, Dumuzi the King, will plow your vulva. O Lady, your breast is your field. Inanna, your breast is your field. Your broad field pours out plants. Your broad field pours out grain. Water flows from on high for your servant. Bread flows from on high for your servant. Pour it out for me, Inanna; I will drink all you offer.'"

Abe cast the paper aside and bent over her where she lay. Taking her breasts in his hands, he admired her hard, dark nipples before he leaned down and took one in his mouth. He had kissed them sweetly before, but today his lips were hard and demanding. His tongue rubbed urgently against them and his fingers were digging into the tender skin. She gasped and embraced him, holding his head against her, urging him on. He moved between her thighs and pushed them apart with his knees. He rubbed the head of his cock on her clit, but she rotated her hips up toward him as she had in the dance.

"Inside!" she begged urgently.

He lifted his weight off her and reached for a knapsack where the condoms were. She put a quick shy hand over his and shook her head. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. Neither of them wanted a baby yet, they'd agreed.

"No." she breathed, "It wouldn't be right. I don't want to be pregnant but... This way," and she opened her vulva to his gaze, "This way is right: right now."

She couldn't explain herself and she was afraid he would try to reason with her, but he didn't. The sight of her open vulva glistening in dappled sunlight, something he had never seen, stopped him. He felt an answering thrill of recklessness as he lay on top of her and began to enter her.

He gasped, and she cried out with pleasure. As they moved together, the sensation of force she had felt while dancing overcame her even more strongly. He was pulling urgently on her nipple with his lips, crushing her other breast in his hand. It felt to her as though their ecstatic pleasure was flowing round and round, out of her breasts, into his mouth, through him to where he plunged irresistibly into her body, up through her, around and around.

Her cries now were pleasure mixed with wonder. As she slipped closer and closer toward orgasm, she had a profound feeling of opening: opening to her lover's thrusts, opening to the beauty that surrounded them, opening to the sky above them, to the forces that held them clinging together in inexpressible awe.

As she started to cum, he pressed his lips to hers, feeling the vibrations of her cries against his mouth. His eyes were closed and for a brief moment the hot, writhing, responsive woman beneath him was not simply Eesha, but all women: lush breasts with pointed nipples; soft thighs; hot, wet, spasming holes.

As she came again, the strange sense continued to come and go in his consciousness. He wanted to fill her and consume her at once; he wanted to shoot his cum inside her. When he felt his own orgasm approaching, he went up onto his hands so that he could see her body under him. She felt his eyes on her, a gaze as intense as his hands had been. He drank in the sight of her curvy, delicate, graceful woman's body. He placed his hands under her hips and lifted them with each powerful thrust. He reveled in the sound of her breathless cries and felt that he possessed her utterly as he poured his cum into her.

When they had swum together again, they lay on the quilt and touched each other lazily.

"We're married!" he said with his open smile.

She smiled back and answered with words of ancient poetry she had committed to memory.

"My lord, the honey-man of the gods, He is the one my womb loves best. His hand is honey, his foot is honey, He sweetens me always. My eager impetuous caresser of the navel, my caresser of the soft thighs, He is the one my womb loves best."

And so they laid together on their wedding day—happy, complete, tenderly dropping pine needles on one another, and feeling that their strange, secret ritual had bound them together as no public ceremony could ever do.