Architecti
Angels aren’t meant to fall in love; we are love, so to speak. We are the essence of all things possibility, beauty and light. Love isn’t really a concept that we share in the Celestial world.
Angels are reared by the collective, we are all family. So love isn’t the sort of thing that happens all too often back home. Angels have children when there is a need for a new angel rather than because of a love match.
And yet.
Gellara surprises me and delights me in ways I struggle to comprehend. Angels and demons don’t mix. And yet, I find myself fascinated with the way she talks about our laws and justice and fairness and how she is determined to campaign for change.
We didn’t catch Interitus that day. Nor the next. Nor the thirty consecutive days after that.
Far too much time for one woman to fall in love with another. And that’s what happened. Slowly but surely, one shared glance after another.
It was the way she would nestle her hand into mine, all warm and calloused from the many deals she had struck. She’d tug me along as we explored yet another street, another field searching for my seemingly lost sister.
Some days, like today, she will take meetings before we search.
She stands outside the apartment and shakes a demon’s hand I don’t recognise.
“And you’ll make sure Arcadius gets the message?
Our campaign paper is almost finished, I don’t want to sit on this.
We must lobby him before the year is out. ”
The demon inclines his head in acknowledgement and leaves, making her way up to our room.
“Now, where were we?” Gellara says.
I smile at her, the sunlight glimmering in her yellow gaze.
Her eyes are curved and round and full of an odd innocence that doesn’t match the fire of her political self.
I love the way it rubs inside me like sandpaper.
She blinks; her gaze eats me up from across the room.
Like she’s ravenous and starved and holding herself back on a leash.
The problem is, I am too.
The more days have passed, the hungrier I am growing. I want to devour her skin and feast on her scent.
“I’m sure I’ve seen Interitus,” she says, waving a lazy hand.
“You’ve seen her, have you?” I say, my words smoothing into silk. “I think I’m going to have to call bullshit on that.”
She huffs and pouts, her golden eyes smouldering heat that screams fuck me.
“I’ve seen her, and I’ll prove it to you. It might just take another day… or five. Or a hundred.”
“And in the meantime?”
She shrugs. “I guess you’ll have to entertain me.”
“Is that so,” I say. “But you’re certain she’s out there, stealing souls and eating them and leaving their carcasses in the street for anyone to find.”
“Mmmhmm. So you’ll have to stay with me, you see. It’s for the best.”
For all our joking, Gellara is right. I’ve seen enough posters calling for the capture of a beast. How ironic. A beast. They think that’s what she is, though perhaps she is now.
It’s not just immoral, it’s against the very fibre of our beings as angels.
Fallen or not, what she’s doing must be fundamentally changing the essence of who and what she is.
It makes bile claw up my throat. A sickness that plagues my insides, that crawls under my skin and writhes like sand and worms and fleas.
“Hey, where did you go?” Gellara asks.
Her hand is on my jaw. Her fingertips grazing my skin so lightly I startle. I’ve not been touched like this in so long. My life has been dedicated to stopping my sister from doing the next thing and the next. I didn’t have time for comforts or pleasures. I only had time to stop her.
She’s standing so close to me her body heat warms my feathers.
“We shouldn’t…” I say, but my words are weak, there’s no impetus behind them because I do want this and she knows it.
“Shouldn’t we?” she purrs.
“We should focus on finding her. Stopping this tirade to end our system of fate before someone gets hurt.”
“She hunts at night. The bodies are always found in the morning. It’s still daylight. Give yourself a moment to breathe. To rest… Let me look after you.”
“Angels aren’t really supposed to partake of the flesh unless it’s to procreate.”
“How sad. I’m not an angel and you have fallen, so I think the Celestial Realm will forgive you this one small pleasure.”
She cups the back of my neck and pulls me in for a deep kiss. Her lips taste rich, like embers from a dying sun. A little smoky, a little warm with the hint of autumn leaves and the beat of a thousand hearts pumping.
Or maybe that’s the racing of my own thumping against my ribs. The kiss is needy and filled with summer bonfires and the hint of red wine. It’s so fucking moreish, I find my arms wrapping around her body. Pawing at her to bring her closer.
I need more.
Want more.
To… to devour her. With every glide of her lips and every caress of her tongue over mine, I come undone.
It’s too much.
It’s everything.
And buried beneath all of it is a lance of pain. It won’t last. Interitus will take this, her, from me. Like she does everything.
I should push her away. Every cell in my body knows I should put distance between us. Tell her no. Force her back. But her fingers have found their way beneath my robes and as she tweaks my nipples, I moan into her kiss.
My clit hums a song I’ve never heard and my entire body shines with light. Her hands caress my stomach and slide between my legs to my soaking slit. I break the kiss as she finds my apex. My head rolls back, a carnal moan slipping from my mouth.
“Gellara…”
This is agony. It drives a need so strong it’s transcendent, and terrifying. I torture myself, with every flick of her hand, knowing that she is becoming my weakness and that I am fallible. Unable to prevent this from happening.
Interitus will find out, and when she does, she will use it against me.
“Stop,” Gellara whispers. “Let go.”
She guides my jaw to face her, and then undresses, flinging her top and trousers off until she’s stood before me utterly naked.
“Gellara,” I whisper her name again, a prayer this time for pleasure and peace and the possibility that I can keep her.
She is divine. Angels are meant to be beautiful, but what stands before me is far beyond beauty.
Her perfectly erect nipples, a darker shade of pink than mine despite her pale nature. Her breasts are full and heavy and my mouth waters at the prospect of taking them in my mouth and suckling until she’s squirming beneath me.
My eyes trace down the ample curves of her tummy to the apex between her legs. A line of hair with neat little coils stops right above her clit.
My tongue glides over my lips, desperate to taste what lies between her folds.
“Architecti,” she whispers…
“Yes?” I say, barely able to take my eyes off the shape of her legs, her waist, her breasts.
“Touch me…”
I hesitate.
“I need you to touch me…”
But I don’t reach out with my hands. Instead, I kneel.
An angel before a demon.
My mouth watering at the prospect of tasting her.
“Are you sure?” I breathe against her skin.
“I’ve never been more certain.” She clasps my neck and guides me towards her core.
I lean in, lust-driven heat billowing from her body.
It’s heavenly. She is heavenly. I place my lips against the softness of her belly. She is soft, and a little cooler than I expected for how much heat is peeling off her. I open my mouth, let my tongue skirt over her curves and moan in ecstasy.
I can’t wait any longer. My tongue drifts down, down, down until I reach the tip of her slit. Then I push my tongue down over her clit. It swells beneath my touch, and I think perhaps I die in this moment and rise back to the Celestial Realm.
I push deeper, nuzzling between her legs, encouraging her to open for me so I can run my tongue along her slit.
It’s wet. So unbelievably wet.
She tastes like all the sunsets I’ve ever seen. Like oceans dappled with moonlight and beach fire drifting in the air. Like the sweetness of summer flowers and the warmest summer winds.
I want to die here. To drown in her and never taste another thing again.
She whimpers, her legs trembling beneath me. She guides me to the bed. Yanks my robes off and pushes between my thighs.
“I need you too,” she says, her fingers dropping to my centre and swiping along my seam.
She brings two glistening fingers up between us and sucks the liquid from one before moaning, her eyes rolling shut.
I never knew a feral creature lived inside me, but this is the moment she snaps awake.
Gellara thrusts the other finger between my lips forcing me to taste myself. She pushes me until I’m lying flat on my back and shuffles between my legs, pushing my thighs apart before lunging forward.
She ravishes me in hungry strokes. Her tongue laps so fast, I cry out from the intense pressure building in my core.
“Please,” I whimper.
She hums approval at the sounds I’m making and hardens her tongue, focusing on my clit as one of her fingers comes to my entrance.
She pushes inside me with no resistance at all so adds a second.
My whole body dissolves. Back arching off the bed, she curls her fingers inside me, sliding them in and out, in and out in a punishing rhythm that tightens my entire body.
My nipples ache with the need to reach my peak.
I cry her name. Beg her for more.
Over and over.
Her tongue licks long laps down my slit and returns to my clit.
Again and again until the pressure mounts and mounts to a precision point. As if I am on the bridge all over again, only this time when I fall, it’s not to the underworld, but to a bed of light and electricity and the most divine pleasure I’ve ever experienced.
It runs through my entire body in blissful shivers that make me pant and see all the light in the realm.
I must lie there for some time, because she’s no longer inside me, but tucked against me, brushing my hair aside. And cooing words of praise in my ear about how good I was, and how I came so perfectly for her.
But as the pleasure from the orgasm fades, I’m left with that familiar ache. A cooling that is more than a come down.
It’s a sick knowing. A knowledge that I cannot keep her. Interitus will not let me have this happy ever after.
And that makes a piece of my soul crumble.