Lioness of the Desert

Lioness of the Desert

     My name is Julie. I am a nurse at the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. It was there that I met Peter. He had quadruple bypass heart surgery. I got assigned to him most every night. He told me Pueblo Indian folktales while I checked his vitals. I sat by his bed while he ate.
     He said, “You know some archaeologists say the Anasazi may have practiced cannibalism.”
      I threw my head back, laughed, and said, “How erotic!”
     He took my sarcasm seriously and said, “Yes, I too, have an appreciation for the dark side of eroticism. Tell me some of your dark fantasies.”
      I shook my head and said, “Well Mr. Tadlock, I’m from the deep south. We’re much more modest than you westerners.”
      He wiped his forehead with his bed sheet. He ran his fingers through his thin gray hair and said, “I’ve always wondered why people go through those superficial formalities before getting intimate. I guess it’s fear of getting hurt. I have no fear. I’m always bluntly honest, even with strangers. I don’t bullshit.”
     I asked him, “Aren’t you afraid of rejection?”
     He asked, “Should I be?”
      After Peter’s discharge I meet him at his desert abode.
    He says, “Julie, I want to take you to a place that is very special to me.”
     I say, “Take me.”
     The next morning, he drives me in his convertible with the top pulled down and the wind rushing over my ears. We drive north then west to Abique. We pass over a dam by a clear blue lake and onto the side of a barren red pyramid-shaped mountain, a thousand feet tall. The red color of the mountain is so rich and vivid that it seems to glow in the afternoon desert light.
     After we pass through red rock canyons and knife edged mountains we pass into the Bisti badlands whose gray rounded hills and strange contorted black rocks resemble a moonscape. I have never seen such magnificent desolation in all my life.
     At Nageezi we head south on a washboard dirt road. The car shakes so badly that it feels like it will fall apart. We travel deeper and deeper into the brown empty rolling desert land.    
     We enter Chaco Canyon. The yellow canyon walls welcome us. We park where the road curves back in a circle. We get out our backpacks with the blankets, food, and other supplies to help us survive the merciless wilderness. He carries one pack and I another as we walk silently across the parched land into the wilderness. We follow an ancient Anasazi trail for hours till the sun is low on the horizon. Finally we come to a ruin whose brick stone walls stand on a rise in the desert.
     We walk through a gap in the wall and into the Kiva. It is a hole dug out of the earth and lined with stone bricks which stick up above the floor of the ruin. We spread our blankets on the dusty floor. We are covered in shadows from the ruin walls as the sun sinks below the horizon. I hear coyotes howl mournfully in the distance.
     Soon we are immersed in pitch-black darkness. The stars shine like millions of candles in the velvet black bowl of the night sky. I ask Peter, “Are you
afraid?”
     He says, “No more than normal.”
     We undress and wrap the wool blankets around us to keep warm with each other’s bodies in the cold desert night. Suddenly I hear footsteps and a scraping sound. I stand up, look over the edge of the Kiva, and see two glowing eyes look back at me. I shine my flashlight and see a majestic mountain lion, muscles rippling in the desert night, perched on the wall of the ruin. She opens her mouth and reveals huge sharp ivory incisors in the beam of my flashlight.
     We stand there, looking at each other for a moment, and I feel real fear. I can see the hunger in her eyes and it connects somehow with my own hunger. We stare at each other. I see her eyes glaze. My heart beats wildly and I freeze. The lioness leaps off the wall and I hear her running into the desert roaring. Peter is asleep through all of this and the fire we built is dying down. I blow on the glowing coals and try to get it to start again.
     Peter awakens shivering and I tell him what I saw. He says, “They are more afraid of us than we are of them. Don’t worry my love.”
     He continues, “I really must have a fire. You stay here while I look for some twigs to burn.”
     I hold his arm and say, “No Peter. Please stay here. The lioness is hungry. I can see it in her eyes.”
     Peter kisses me and says, “No fear my love.”
     He gets up and walks toward an opening in the walls of the ruin. I follow him with my flashlight. With the terror of recognition I see the lioness in front of him. I say, “Peter. Stay still.” I can see she is stalking him. I take Peter’s colt 45 out of the pack and aim it between her eyes. She looks at me and I feel an empathetic connection with her. For a moment I freeze and then pull the trigger. She falls like a limp rag doll. Daddy taught me well and my aim was good. I got her between the eyes.
      This is my first kill. I remember how daddy had the boys cover themselves with the blood of the first deer they killed. Peter stands still with his back turned to me and I take his hunting knife out of the pack. I walk up to the dead lioness and crouch down beside her as Peter looks on watching me with his flashlight. I pet her head and then grasp her ears to pull her head back and slit her throat. Blood pours out with a sickly sweet smell and I cover my naked body with it. I coat my face, breasts, legs, torso, and even my sex with her blood.
      Somehow the smell of her blood creates a deep hunger in me. My heart pumps fast and I drip with sweat. I stand up, turn around, and face Peter. He is naked too and I walk toward him. I lay him down on the blankets. I gently grasp his erection. Its skin feels silky, as I caress it and feel it throb in my hand. He asks, “Are you going to seduce me with black magic?”
     I put my finger to his lips and say, “Of course.”
     I say, “Do you feel strong enough? I don’t want to fuck you to death.”
     He laughs and says, “What better way to join the choir invisible.”
     I feel him rise to the occasion in my hand. I say, “That’s not funny. Hey does that idea turn you on?”
     He looks up at me. He says, “Don’t worry. My heart is as strong as an ox.”
     I beam my lipstick smile upon him. I say, “Well your physician said you can have sex. So who am I to dispute a board certified doctor.”    
     I mount my dragon man. My velvet cleft swirls in a butterfly kaleidoscope. The communal being of my cellular heaven  coalesces in my clitoral star.
     Coyotes howl across the desert. The moon shines high above us and illuminates our nocturnal fornication. I look down at his face. The soft smooth roundness of his cheeks and the look of innocence in his eyes make him look childlike in the moonlight.
     He closes his eyes and appears as though in a trance. He has the same look on his face as the face of the Buddha, sitting under the Bodhi tree, just before achieving enlightenment which I’d seen in a Nepalese painting.
     The lioness’ blood is drips from my body and covers his chest and face as I kiss him pressing my hard nipples against his firm chest. I raise my upper body and scrape his breast with my nails, leaving red streaks. He breathes hard and fast now.
     The intensity of the sex is almost hallucinogenic. Something about these wild places brings out a primal force in me. I have left my civilized self behind in my delirium. My mind operates on pure instinct. I am a wild Puma devouring him.
     I look down at him through my glazed eyes with pure hunger. I think on the lioness and her hunger. I felt a sisterhood with her. We were both hunters. Something comes together within me. I feel my Chakras fuse as I absorb his energy. I dig my fingernails deep into his chest muscles. I feel his body tense as the heat between us becomes an inferno.
     I smell his musk mixed with the sweetly pungent scent of the lioness’ blood. Droplets of the blood trickle down my cheeks onto my lips. I lick the sweet blood off my lips as I violently thrust my hips, savagely taking Peter.
     Deep in the hollow at the apex of my legs, I feel my soft walls tighten around his member. In the crevice of my orchid, I feel my tiny stamen hum with glorious pleasure. Sparks of heat and flame shoot from my tiny nub of flesh through my spine as I feel the tide of pleasure begin to surge through my body.
     He climaxes with a soft moan and his body falls limp under me. My climax is muted as his member goes limp like a soft spaghetti noodle within me. I am so close for him to get tired and leave me in heat.
     Something is wrong. He isn’t breathing. I feel his chest. His heart has ceased beating. I beat his chest trying to bring him back. But he lies there, cold and still in the desert night.
     I am furious with him. Just at the point he is about to surrender himself completely to me, and fill the ache of hunger in my body and soul, he has left me with only this mortal shell. I am mad at him for leaving me in the throes of passion, so hungry and unsatiated.
     I cover his face with the blanket. My anger subsides. A flood of sorrow fills my heart and I weep while cradling his head in my lap. The sun rises the next morning like a succulent orange resurrecting my hunger for endless life.