Chapter 17

17

ELIAS

E lias had no idea what he was doing.

Well, he knew he was fucking Tlalli, and judging by the sounds she was spilling all over the conservatory floor, he knew he was fucking her good, but... apart from that, he had no clue.

He had no idea what had come over him; he hadn’t thought too hard about it. Maybe it was the finality that had begun to outline their conversation. Maybe it had felt too much like an ending. Either way, now was a hell of a time to start catching feelings, physical or otherwise, for Tlalli. War was inevitable, and they had been abandoned here on Earth with Anthony and his desire to trigger it himself.

Of course, these developments may have been the driving force behind his boldness. The end of the world was on the horizon, and Elias was tired of constantly looking back at his existence and wishing he’d done more . He did not need another regret, and he would have regretted not trying to give Tlalli something that might symbolize the truth. He cared for her. He always had, but he never felt like he’d been allowed to do it out loud. That hadn’t been fair to her, and had she turned him down now, he would’ve understood. He would have been horrified, too, if she’d turned him down, what with the way he’d gone about it, just jumping her like that, but...

Well, he couldn’t quite explain it, but something in her spirit had pulled at his, and he’d trusted it. He’d trusted it so deeply and so desperately that this, like war, had felt inevitable.

He pushed two fingers into her mouth and pressed down on her tongue, then reveled in the sudden sound of her gagging. He sped up his strokes instinctively, digging into her deeper and deeper, until his name dotted the air amidst her string of moans. It was jarring to think he’d never known Heaven until this very moment. All that time spent Upstairs, and yet this was the closest he had ever been to a god. How lucky he was now.

And how damned.

“You—bastard,” she spat once he removed his fingers, even as she bounced her ass upward into his stroke, keeping the game alive.

“But you didn’t think I’d do it, right?” he shot back, more animated than he’d been in a while. “You didn’t think I could.”

“I still ain’t seen nothin’ new.”

“Admit that you wanted this, Tlalli.” He grunted.

“No.”

“Say it.”

“Fuck—”

“Confess your sins.”

She expelled a long moan, one that shot through him like a blast of hot air.

Between her little movie with Cahuani and her choice of safe word, he’d known the moment she relayed her safe word, he knew what games she liked to play, and he had realized just as quickly that he was willing—even eager—to play them too.

“I know you want to,” he said. “You’ve been wanting to. You wanted me to punish you. You wanted me to shove this dick inside you.”

“Get over yourself?—”

“You wanted me to fuck you until you begged me for mercy.”

“I don’t!”

“Then say the word!”

She wouldn’t. He knew she wouldn’t. She had let him in. He could hear every thought and feel every emotion pulsing through her, and he could see every vivid fantasy her mind was stringing together in quick succession, like a movie made just for him. She wanted this as badly as he did, and he would be sure to deliver.

“I don’t want it,” she lied halfheartedly. “I don’t want you , Elias.”

How funny they had both truly believed that not an hour ago.

“And when you cum for me?” he growled. “Then what?”

“Never.”

“We’ll see.”

He pushed himself up onto his hands, drawing his knees up and driving impossibly deeper until she was trying to claw her way up the floor. Her attempts were of no consequence, however. He kept her in place, pinning her face to the tile with one hand and her shoulder down with the other. Then he folded his wings back beneath his skin and began drilling even harder into her pussy with every intention of ruining her right there for anyone to see.

He could have pulled them out of the room, out of existence, into a void only they could navigate. But no. He was petty and possessive, and part of him wanted someone to see, to know he could be a monster, too. That he wasn’t just Michael’s lapdog or Heaven’s dull blade. That he was still more powerful than Anthony could ever hope to be in Heaven or on Earth. He had teeth and claws and needs and wants, and all of them yearned for Tlalli now.

No matter how this ended or what happened next, he vowed to leave his mark on her.

She didn’t bother muffling her screams, and neither did he as his hips clapped violently against hers. His legs pushed hers farther apart, and her pitch changed with every new angle he managed to hit in stride. Yeah, this wasn’t his first rodeo by any means, and he was pulling out all the stops for her. Whatever had clicked in his mind the day before was firmly rooted in place now, and he wasn’t about to act as if he weren’t dedicated to keeping it there. He didn’t know what would happen when they went back to Heaven. All he knew was that he didn’t ever want her to question his admiration again.

Though he imagined that might be a bit hard when this felt like anything but an intimate fuck.

She whined as he pulled out of her and whipped her head around to scowl at him. Before she could form an audible question, he had hold of her ankle, and he flipped her onto her back none too gently.

Her legs remained spread before him, making it easy for him to slip right back inside, but a shift in the air was undeniable. She stared up at him in awe, her lips parted and eyes glittering with flecks of divine gold. He couldn’t explain to her what was transpiring between them—inside him—right now, so he hoped she wouldn’t ask. The slow stroke he delivered now must have given her at least some semblance of an answer because suddenly her mouth was at his throat and her nails were at his back.

He wanted to tell her that she need not claw her way in. She had already done that.

He’d been trying to figure it out, what it was he saw in her, sought in her. The answer hit him now as he threw caution to the wind and relinquished his hold on his last lingering inhibitions: it was the image of who he wanted to be, who he wished he would have been.

She would have done the right thing all those ages ago. She would have followed her friends into the fire. No, she would have followed her own conscience. She would have rebuked the future she saw in the Heavens and burned it all down with the speed of her descent. She would have been braver than him. And for that, she deserved better than what the Dominion would ever be willing to give her.

He knew he couldn’t offer her anything more than the Dominion, but he wanted to show her that he would if he could. He didn’t know if this was the best way to do it, but it was what he had, this last little piece of him that had not yet become jaded. He hoped it was enough, even just for a moment.

When everything became too real, he sped up again, and she urged him on with her hands, firmly gripping his ass. Their sounds skittered across the floor, strained and staggered and so very human. He felt both powerful in this skin and vulnerable when he touched hers. And he knew that whether he ruined her or not, she would certainly leave him in ashes. He would never be the same again.

She came with a cry that she tried and failed to muffle against his shoulder, the outline of her own wings bursting out beneath her with a blanket of shimmery light.

“Elias! I?—”

She convulsed against the cold floor, her eyes rolling back as his hand wrapped around her throat. As much as he wanted to make this last, he knew it was coming to an end, and he intended to greet that end on his terms, to make it count.

His grip tightened as he kept pumping into her, and his mind homed in and fixated on every constriction of her pussy around his cock. This was all he knew now, the only thing he could discern in a world of muddled colors and white noise. He could drown in the bliss of knowing her like this. In that moment, he truly wanted to.

“Fuck!” he snarled against her cheek as he buried himself to the hilt again, once, twice, three times, before he tumbled over the edge and into oblivion. His eyes rolled back then too, his body seizing as his back arched. Her hands were on his ass again, then her legs around his thighs, milking him eagerly until he’d emptied his seed inside her. He shuddered once more before collapsing atop her, struggling to catch his breath. Her fingers tangled in his hair; her lips brushed his temple. It was so soft that he wanted to cry.

How foolish an idea this had been. How was he ever supposed to recover? This was why he’d run from it in the first place. Cumming wasn’t the only climax after all. This was his peak, and he would never reach it, much less reach past it, again.

This was how to kill a mortal—douse them in longing.

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