Page 68 of Andalusia Dogs
“Come,” she said aloud. “Don’t be frightened, please.”
“Frightened?” Alex asked as they climbed up the rocks to the outcropping where Joanna—he presumed—had built her fire. “Why should we be frigh…”
He had glanced behind him for less than a second, less time than it had taken Orpheus to condemn his love with the same action, yet what he saw chilled him as he held his breath, trying to will away what had to be an illusion. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of faces, mostly young women, though with an undeniable sprinkling of men in their number, dressed in archaic clothing stared back at him. Flaming torches illuminatedtheir faces, many of which were scarred with puncture wounds, deep gouges or worse. Some were missing eyes or ears, others were burned beyond recognition. Yet all were staring at Alex and Vicente, intruders in their sacred place.
“Confused?” asked Joanna. “Perplexed? Fascinated or perhaps enticed, just as Jago enticed you?” Her hair shifted as she tilted her head. Alex noticed Vicente’s hand tighten around his.
“My god…” Vicente said, looking around the cavern.
“God isn’t here. Not the one you mean, anyway.” Joanna rose to her full height, rounding the fire anti-clockwise until she stood before Alex. Her dress fell from her shoulders, leaving the fire’s light to lick her bare skin.
“Jo?”
“Disrobe,” she said quietly.
Alex didn’t know what faith compelled him to obey, but he did. Ignoring their unexpected audience, he shucked off his shirt and began unbuckling his belt as if they’d become obstructions to his understanding Joanna’s intentions, or the nature of this place. Though he didn’t interrupt, Vicente watched Alex in a way that made it clear this revelation had been Alex’s alone. Once he was naked, Joanna gathered his clothes along with her costume, held them briefly to her face, then threw them in the fire.
“Jo! What the—”
“Vis,” she interrupted him with a bored inflection that unsettled Alex. “You’re a good man. But we’ve no more to offer one another.”
Joanna snaked her arms around Alex’s neck, kissed his face and languidly suckled his throat, chin and earlobes, all the whilepushing her body closer to his. Yet Vicente remained as still as the Lucifer under which they’d watched her dance. Alex felt his cock stiffen, though nobody had touched it. It cast an obscene shadow against the cave wall, bouncing around in the fire’s light as Joanna withdrew. Looking down with embarrassment, he saw firelight lap the smooth, tanned curves of Jago’s body as his chest rose and fell. He too was hard, and the sight only heightened Alex’s lust. Yet to cover or touch himself in any way seemed an act of sacrilege.
“Do you want to hold him?” Joanna asked. “I assure you, his hearts desire it.”
“Hearts?” Alex asked. “Plural?”
Joanna retreated to the shadows and lounged against the stone, naked as Eve and silent as a grave.
“Alex,” Vicente hissed. “We should leave.”
Alex looked up at him, stunned by the suggestion. “Youwant to leave? Now?”
“Hold Jago,” Joanna said again.
“Please?” Vis begged, shivering despite the fire. “Alex, this was a mistake. I’m so cold.”
“My love?” Joanna’s voice possessed no mockery, only the kindness and playfulness she had always shown Vicente during their time together. “Warm yourself by the fire. You must be tired as well.”
Alex leapt to catch Vicente as his knees appeared to give way. He lowered him perpendicular to Jago, putting about three feet between him and the fire. Before Alex could ask if he was comfortable, Vicente was sound asleep.
“Joanna?” The name was thick with caution as he said it. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but—”
“Why would you want to stop something you don’t understand?” She returned to the fireside, sitting cross-legged once more. “Come.”
Without a better option, Alex sat, trying not to look at the crowd or their penetrating stares. “Why are you here? Did Jago bring you?”
“We journeyed together. I think it’s rather taken it out of him, though.”
Jago and Vicente’s long, steady breaths filled the silence between them.
“You drugged him,” Alex said. “Was it the wine? Is that why I felt so—”
“You thought I needed rescue?” she asked. “How tediously chivalrous. Your imagination is better than that, Alex.”
He swallowed as a young woman whose neck bore the dark outline of a rope bruise drew his eye. “I still don’t understand. What are you doing here? The Zugarramurdi witches were just ordinary women who—”
“You needn’t reassure yourself.” She held up a delicate hand as she interrupted him. “They won’t hurt you. But there is both truth and falsehood in what you say, and in the end, who’s to sort the blameless from those with powers such as Jago’s? They all gather here now, to these caves, forged in fire, to sup from a power that is as real as it is ancient.”
