Chapter 32
“… Ophelia… Ophelia!”
Someone was shouting my name vehemently in the smoky dark.
My eyes flew as wide as they could with the smog in the air, stinging and making them water.
I unfurled from my tight, secure ball on the ground, muscles and joints complaining from the effort of moving.
The powdery residue of warm cinders flaked off my skin and clothes as I pushed upright.
Stutters in my heart echoed through my blood, pulsing uncomfortably in my veins.
A flurry of ash drifted carelessly and snow-like all around the darkened cavern. The blanket of warm embers left a metallic burn at the back of my tongue, and I swallowed hard despite my dry, raw throat.
“Ophelia…” My ears were ringing.
Half-catatonic, I nearly collapsed in a coughing fit while trying to stand.
But I came up short, staring across the charred sanctum at the scorched, brutalized skeletal remains littering the ground within the blast radius of the fire pit.
Malformed corpses were strewn in every direction, burnt and frozen in the agonizing position of their death.
Some of the mangled bodies are still half-transformed and smoldering.
The stink of sulfuric smoke and roasting flesh clogged my nose and mouth. I slammed a hand over my face, staring horrified and nauseated, almost choking on the suffocating rancid smell. Sour bile rose bitter and sharp in the back of my throat.
It took sheer force of will not to vomit.
They were dead—all of them. The stolas and whoever they were outside in the real world.
Gone, decimated, their lives snuffed out as the consequence of whatever infernal thread had connected their power to their god.
Moloch had bound his apostles so tightly to his essence that his destruction had wrecked and corrupted his servants. Entirely annihilated in one fell swoop.
The enormity of it all crashed into me.
Relieved as I might be that they were all dead, and the threat was seemingly gone, ragged sobs ripped from me.
Part shock and part grief. I couldn’t hold my crumbling exterior together as I mentally and emotionally fell apart.
I was terrified and stunned, straddling the line of what was real and how to continue living from this point on.
I was alone, drifting through the pillars of smoke obscuring the underground cavern. And Luther was nowhere to be seen.
My fragile heart shattered.
“Oh, god no… Luther… where…?” I inhaled sharply, turning dizzily and scouring the smoke and ash for any sign of life. Desperate for it.
I hadn’t seen evidence of him since he’d gone down with the monsters. He couldn’t have burned up with them. I refused to believe it.
“Lu-Luther,” his name escaped as a cracked whimper.
Exhaustion, despair, and the incessant stinging pain in my hand spun me through a whirlwind of panic until I stumbled.
A hard, sturdy bar curled around my waist, supporting me, and keeping me from dropping like a stone in still water. Struggling through the smoke muddying my mind, I fought the grasp until a familiar warmth and scent enveloped me.
“Ophelia, oh thank God.” Strong hands cupped my face, and his deep voice wrapped around me like a much-needed security blanket.
Powerful arms kept me pulled close to his broad chest as if trying to tuck me into the cavern of himself where I’d remain safe and unharmed.
I’d burrow against his beating heart if I could, if only to prove he was real, he was here, and he was alive.
I melted into the feeling of him, sturdy and supportive, chest heaving and heart pounding in my ear.
“Are you-are you okay?” he asked, tone urgent.
“Yes—fine—just fine.” Only it was a lie, and he knew that.
Because I wasn’t fine, and neither was he.
But maybe we would be.
“You’re alive… Oh, God.” I sniffed and buried my face in his chest. “I thought the worst. I thought—” A ferocious shudder ripped through me, and I clenched my jaw against an onslaught of tears.
“It’s alright. I’m here. We’re alright.” He tucked my head under his chin and folded himself around me.
Tucked tight in his embrace, I tried to hold on to the feeling of improbable triumph growing in the dark.
We stayed burrowed into one another for as long as possible, giving our hearts a chance to slow and time for reality to catch up.
Around us, the cavern cooled, the cinders settled into a field of ash, and the demons’ bones crumbled into dust. Except for the sound of my stuttered weeping and his thundering heart, there was silence.
When the panic receded, shock rushed in.
I existed in a suspended state, abstractly aware of the world around me.
Luther ripped a strip from his shirt and wrapped it around the weeping blisters on my palm.
He kissed the back of my hand before wrapping an arm around me and guiding me out of the cavernous sanctum.
It might have been minutes or hours that we traversed the underground tunnels before coming up for air on the fog-shrouded Kilbride campus.
My tender, unstable psyche floated over my head, and I barely remembered how we got to my house.
Only a few fragments lingered: blurred streetlights, fog coiled in the limbs of barren trees, the stench of smoke clinging to my hair and clothes.
The heavy contact of Luther’s hand on my thigh the entire way.
Then the shock of a bitter chill as he escorted me from a car to my house.
By the time Luther carried me through the front door, the night had finally caught up with me.
When he steered me to my bathroom, I tried to stand on my own but swayed under the weight of the night’s trauma.
I was barely aware of the sound of the faucet knobs squeaking as they turned and water hitting shower tiles.
I made it as far as the sink, trying and failing to peel off my smoke-heavy clothes before my knees buckled and the world swayed sideways. My breath hitched, and I collapsed as the sob that had been building deep in my chest for hours, days, months, finally imploded.
I dropped to the floor, cradling my injured hand to my chest.
All the agony, misery, betrayal, culminated into one unstable star that decimated my composure. Great whooping cries breached me, my heart faltered in the cage of my ribs, and a flood of tears blinded me to my surroundings.
Luther was beside me in an instant. I hadn’t even managed to fully undress before breaking down.
I looked like a disoriented, pathetic creature smothered in ash and worn thin.
But he didn’t flinch. He didn’t look away.
Instead, he sat behind me on the floor and gathered me into his lap as though I weighed nothing.
As though I were a precious treasure and it was his duty to cherish me—like I was his.
And I was.
Luther’s hands were moving soothingly over my body, and his mouth hovered near my ear. “Breathe, sweetheart. Just breathe. It’s alright. They’re gone. We’re safe. You did it. Amazing, wonderful girl. So perfect. You did amazing. So good.” And then the dam broke with, “I’m so proud of you.”
Bone-deep, soul-crushing sobs heaved out of me.
The hard, ugly, sniveling kind you tried to keep hidden from the outside world.
Yet there I was, shaking with visceral aftershocks of horror and the fact we barely made it out alive.
All the while, his arms remained curled tight, caged around me.
He was holding me up, warm and unmoving, but tender and secure.
“It’s over,” he whispered, his own breath shallow and ragged as he repeated an endless cycle of praise until the words drilled into my skull. “Ophelia, it’s over. I’m here. I’ve got you. I’m proud of you.”
I clung to him as my lifeline.
My everything.
No matter all the reasons I had tried to tell myself it was insane before, he would never abandon me, betray me, or set me in harm’s way. Perhaps those were just excuses, and I was fooling myself, but in the end, I decided it didn’t matter.
Despite the age gap, the trials, his oddly endearing obsession, it was true.
Luther would go to the ends of the world for me.
His sense of possession might be off-putting to others, but that was exactly what I needed.
I needed to belong to some place, someone, and to be cared for.
And with him, I didn’t need to ask. It was intuitive and natural.
Even in the penultimate moment of vulnerability, we were in sync.
Steam billowed around the bathroom, cocooning us in humid warmth.
Neither of us spoke when Luther eventually hauled me from the floor and delicately peeled off the rest of my clothing.
He ushered me under the water, wordlessly beginning the slow, gentle process of washing dried ash and crusted blood from my skin.
The water ran in pink and gray swirls beneath our feet.
He was exceptionally careful with the burn on my hand and the cut on my forearm. I hissed from the stinging pain as he cleaned the wounds but gritted my teeth so he wouldn’t stop. I wanted his touch, even if it hurt.
Luther wrapped me in a towel with a tenderness that spoke of steadfast devotion.
His adherence to my aches and pains, to my moods and my unspoken needs further tangled him in the vulnerable parts of me that no one else could ever dream of reaching.
His touch was so reverent and careful it made me want to weep for entirely different reasons.
Throat tight, and eyes drained of tears, I watched as he cleaned and bandaged my wounds, finishing the work with another kiss to the back of my wrapped hand.
Then he lifted me into the cradle of his arms, carrying me down the hall and over the threshold of my bedroom. But when he set me on my feet and turned to my dresser for clothes, I stopped him with my unhurt hand catching his wrist.
“Luther,” he turned, hearing the strangled emotion in my voice, “please, I… I need you.”
He faced me, half in shadow and half brushed in silver moonlight from the window. A contrast of light and darkness, and both sides of him belonged to me. He nodded, dipping his face to press his forehead to mine. “Anything for you, sweetheart.”
His warm breath skimmed my lips, and I rose on the tips of my toes to kiss him.
And he kissed back, though not like before. These weren’t the charged, frenzied kisses we’d shared. They were gentle, cautious, and significant. The type of kisses that whispered in rasping breaths and rising moans, I thought I lost you and you’re mine.
Handling me as if I were made of porcelain, he lowered me onto the bed and climbed over my body.
He kissed me soundly until my back was flat on the mattress.
Then he settled atop me and parted my legs with his knee.
Our bodies were perfectly slotted together, and I widened my thighs in welcome of him.
I opened for him, blossoming like a flower in spring.
It was a primal impulse, to come together and use one another to feel alive. To bring each other back from the brink of death we had balanced on for too long. And he was the only thing that made me feel so alive, so hot, like a supernova flaring bright.
His hands were precise and skilled in how they handled me. He spent time kissing and biting from my neck to my shoulder, making me shiver. I ran my tongue over his neck and dug my nails into his back until he groaned.
Luther usually fucked me as if staking a claim on me, as if trying to prove something to me he already knew. But not tonight. He moved with certainty, knowing that I was finally wholly his.
His cock plunged deep in one swift thrust. I was so damn wet, he met no interference. He slid to the hilt with one gruff, “Fuuuuck.”
“Luther, oh God,” I gasped into his open mouth, breathing the same hot air. “Luther, please…”
“I know, sweetheart,” he groaned, rolling his hips. “I know.”
I keened, whining into his throat.
My nails clawed into his shoulders, pulling him closer until there wasn’t a breath of space between his bare skin and mine.
Red welts appeared down his spine, and I locked my legs around his waist to keep him rocking deep.
Then, I curled my fingers in the damp waves of his hair and held him impossibly tighter, moaning into him.
Slowly at first, he fucked me as if trying to luxuriate in what we were doing and the fact we had survived against all odds. Gentle, affectionate, appreciating the feel of my body succumbing to the bliss he offered.
It felt like he was trying to make the moments last for as long as possible. And I held on tight, absorbing everything he gave me.
His hips snapped against mine, his cock stimulated divine pleasure inside my cunt, and the beating of his heart matched the tempo of mine. He fucked his desire, his devotion, and his possession so deep in my core I didn’t think there was any part of me that wouldn’t be his for the rest of my life.
Sensation pulled taut inside me, and my back arched into him. He thrusted harder, faster, pounding me into the bed as my legs quivered around his waist. He lifted his head, staring openmouthed in awe as I hurtled toward my release.
The first wave of my climax hit when he slammed his mouth into mine and told me, “I love you.”
I was caving under the pressure of a shattering orgasm when I gasped back, “Oh, God, I love you too.”
We came together in a glorious breakthrough of euphoria.
My inner walls clamped down on his cock, fluttering with wave after wave of sensation. He fought to keep up his rhythm as his cock twitched and he spilled inside me.
It was a combined nexus that welded our souls together. A surge of ecstasy, swelling in my marrow and escalating into the prickles of bliss bursting along my skin. Body, blood, bones, and soul, we were tethered for life.
I fell asleep with his arms banded around me, tucking me into the safe embrace of his body and warmth. The memory of wicked yellow eyes, feathers, and fire faded like mist in the wind as a gentle darkness swept in to carry me away.