Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
ABADDON
She smiles like she’s daring the world. The sight is ridiculous and unbearable and utterly her. Perhaps it’s a fungus in the stew—some mushrooms make mortals wander in strange circles — for she speaks half in sense and half in fire.
I lean in, the motion practiced and careful, and lift her lids with two fingers to study her pupils.
Creator-Father liked his luxuries and his substances.
I watched him change when the world was smeared with stupefaction.
“Abaddon!” she cries, and the sound of my name on her lips is a warm blade in my chest. I savor it, but not at the cost of my scrutiny.
Her eyes betray no drugged glaze. No bloodshot rim. She scowls as I release her face. “What was that for?” she demands.
“I am unsure if you are of sound mind,” I say bluntly.
She laughs—the disregard curls like flame—and then becomes serious with a question I did not expect. “Why do you treat them like monsters? How can you lock your brothers in a basement?” She moves her hands to her hips, and the little flame in her eyes is more dangerous than any weapon.
I pause. The question stabs at a place my mind keeps bandaged. Chains. Cold stone. My father’s orders. The answer is a practice I have kept so long it hardened into law. “They are dangerous,” I say. “Romulus’s parasite—” I make the word sharp as a spear.
She shakes her head as if the sound will dislodge belief. “You call it a parasite. But he spoke to me like a man before—before his head spun. How do you know there is no hope? Have you tried… another way?”
The audacity of the question burns. For a creature raised on commands and correction, such softness is unnatural and infuriating.
My first impulse is to roar and shut down the debate.
Instead, I feel something else: the notch of shame, the long bruise of my own past. Creator-Father chained me, tore at me, taught me obedience by the lash. I have been both jailer and jailed.
“You would have me release them into an empty wild?” I say tightly. “You would have me undo the only order that keeps this place from disintegrating into blood and chaos?”
“How would you like,” she shoots back, “to be locked in filth and called a monster? Would you deserve it?”
Her words knock at the old place in my ribs. I do not answer with heat this time. Coldness slides into my chest—the cold that speaks of consequence, not of fury. “Enough,” I say, and the single syllable is an edge.
She steps forward, danger bright in her face.
“You might order me around in bed. You might like that. But do not think this life we begin will be you barking orders and me shrinking. This is my life too. I will not be made small.” She plants a small finger in my face as if I were a child and she were the thunder.
The brazenness is a challenge, and I feel my animal smile.
She refuses me. She is fed and obstinate.
I set her on the counter with an effortless lift—she weighs so little in my hands—and the pots clatter under my wings like fallen trophies.
She rolls her eyes to the rafters. Her small contradictions—pious gestures, daring steps in the snow, the way she met my brothers’ visages without flinching—are astonishing. The more she resists, the more the hunger inside me swells.
She tests me; I adore that she dares.
My cock swells at the sight of her—at her defiance, at the tender curve of her breasts when she crosses her arms. She ought to obey. Yet she is no common consort. She is a spark that does not burn out when fanned. She walks the border of my rules and does not fall.
When I lower a hand between her legs, she turns her head away in shyness; let her pretend.
My finger finds what is tender and, like a craftsman learning a new instrument, I pay attention. I have never been permitted such intimacy. I learn quickly.
Her gasp when the pad of my finger grows wet is a small, bright sound that sets the world to rights.
A bead of gush gathers at the tip of my cock; I swipe it up with my thumb and smear it along the sweet of her lower lip.
Her mouth opens in shock at the contact, and our eyes lock in a flash of raw, ridiculous hunger.
I push the rest of my thumb to her waiting mouth.
“If you will not speak,” I say, voice low, “then I am happy to utilize your mouth in other ways.”
Her tongue flicks. At first, it is curiosity, then a careful, kitten lick. The way she yields to explore me is a prayer I never learned to pray. I rise, wings beating, until my cock hovers at her lips. The air hums with tension, with the taste of iron and fur and something like forgiveness.
“Say no,” I growl one last time, a game and a plea.
She arches an eyebrow and reaches up. Those small hands fist my shaft; they cannot wrap it whole, yet the pressure she gives is ruinous.
Eyes still on me, she takes my bulbous head into her mouth and the world lurches. I lose the small steadiness in my wings.
Her tongue is silk. I had expected nothing, so everything she does is a strike against my restraint. She swallows what she can, kitten-nibbling, then sinks lower until her whole mouth accepts the cock head.
My body forgets all austerity. Flight stumbles into frenzy.
I push in and out of that warm, stubborn mouth. My head hits the ceiling as I lose control of my wings momentarily again. But I don’t care.
She giggles, then grasps my shaft tighter to hold me in place. I growl, absolutely losing it between the press of her slight little consort’s fingers and the pop of re-entering her sweet mouth. She sucks hard every time I am in her mouth, and her kitten’s tongue licks and I—
Oh fuck, I—
My gush explodes into her mouth, the overflow down her chin and breasts a glowing liquid waterfall.
I lose my flight completely and crash onto the counter beside her, no doubt making a dent in the damn thing. But she has so flummoxed me.
She giggles again, and I barely have the energy to keep my eyes open as my chest spasms, the aftershocks sending extra gush pulsing out of my cock. I only wish I were able to keep my flight so I could still be in her mouth.
Distantly, I remember I was supposed to be making some point.
I’ve been trying to teach her obedience of some sort.
So why am I the one curled over and panting on Creator-Father’s fancy countertops?
She wipes at her mouth and looks at me, part triumph, part triumph’s victim, and I find I do not object.
The lesson I had sought to teach twists into something else: I will take and I will give; I will break and I will build.
I will keep her. I will breed her if I must. But first—tonight—I will adore the way she trembles at my hand and the way she laughs after she has swallowed my ruin.
“Remember,” I murmur, catching my breath or trying to at least, “you are mine by claim and by choice.”
“Don’t get cocky,” she breathes back, but the fire in her eyes says otherwise.
I tuck my wings, cup her chin, and let the hush settle between us. A covenant born of mouths and leather and the ancient hunger shared with this lovely creature that has now given me her name.