Chapter 22 #2
I oblige, leaning in closer as I do. His head tilts forward automatically, as if pulled toward me by a magnet, but he pauses before he fully closes the gap between us. “I’m monstrous, Willow,” he says hoarsely. “You can’t be attracted to me like this.”
“And what if I am?” I continue to caress his wing, watching the way his many eyes all go half-lidded at once as I touch him.
“But… But I’m…” He tilts his head back, eyes sliding fully shut.
“You’re still you,” I say. “Cain.”
His eyes open again at the sound of his name, fixing on me with an almost desperate look.
“Say it again,” he whispers.
I pull him closer by the neck, bringing my mouth an inch from his lips. “Cain,” I whisper.
“Willow…” He’s practically panting, but he’s still holding back. “You really want me? Now? Like this?”
I pull him even closer, my lips just barely brushing against his, our breath intertwined as I speak. “If I’m going to die tomorrow, I want to die with the taste of you on my lips.”
He kisses me. A hard and eager press of his mouth.
I part my lips for him and his tongue darts in, feverishly hot as it strokes against my own.
As soon as he gives in, I can feel his hunger.
His mouth moves down my jaw and to my neck, sucking sensitive skin between his lips.
I gasp, back arching, my grip on his neck going slack.
His stiff length presses against my thigh, and he rocks against me.
So eager, almost desperate. How long has he been waiting for permission to do this?
He’s not the only one who’s waited for this moment. I grind down against his straining erection, and he moans, head falling back, face flushed and chest heaving. He’s beautiful, with ink-black hair spilling around his face, red eyes heavily lidded as he looks at me.
“So fucking pretty,” I breathe, stroking my thumb along a dark vein beneath his eye, tracing the curve of a closed eye on his cheek.
“I’m not,” he murmurs in protest, trying to turn away, but I grip his chin and hold him in place.
“You are,” I say. “Just like this. Let me look at you.”
He squirms beneath me, color flaring in his pale face. “But I’m…” He continues to murmur in protest, but he doesn’t push me away as I trace a fingertip down his torso. Admiring extra eyes, black feathers, pale skin laced with dark veins.
“Beautiful,” I murmur. “You’re beautiful.”
“Willow, you don’t have to—”
“Hush.” I press a finger to his lips to stop him.
He stills, flushing harder. I study his reaction, and after a moment, I press my thumb against his lower lip.
Another hesitation, and his lips part, allowing my finger to slide between them and press against his tongue.
I force his mouth open wider, turning his face from side to side as I admire his sharp teeth.
“Beautiful,” I say again. “You’re perfect like this, Cain. ”
He lets out a low whine, and my thumb slides free from his mouth, connected by a thin string of saliva.
“I’m a monster,” he whispers in protest.
“Then you’re my monster.”
I lean down to kiss him, the tip of my tongue playing along the sharp edges of his fangs. He’s clumsy as we kiss, inexperienced, but the slow and sloppy way we make out still drives me wild. When I pull away, he’s breathing hard, a look of desperation on his face.
He’s so worked up. It occurs to me that I should be worried about this driving him into an episode.
But—even with a sheen of sweat on his forehead and the rapid rise and fall of his chest, there’s no sign of fear or discomfort.
No telltale buzz of pressure in the air.
The look in his eyes is half dazed, heavily lidded—and his extra eyes, including the one on his forehead, are all shut, as though sleeping.
If anything, he seems almost more normal, more human. Curious, I push my thumb into his mouth again, fingers on his jaw to urge him to open for me. His teeth are still sharp, but his canines are smaller than before. It’s almost like he’s going dormant under my touch.
“You really are being good for me,” I murmur, slowly rolling my hips, rocking on top of him while he gasps out breathy sounds of pleasure. I bite my lip. “Have you ever…?”
He huffs a strained laugh. “When? With whom?”
I grab him by the chin and give him a playful shake. “Answer the question, Cain.”
I’m mostly teasing, but when he looks at me, his pupils are huge and dark with lust. Color floods his face, and I feel the way his cock twitches against me as his muscles tense. As I’ve suspected, he seems to enjoy being ordered around an awful lot.
“No,” he says. “Never.”
I slide my hand to cup his cheek. “Would you like to?”
He nods, breath shaky.
I rub a thumb over his lower lip. “Answer me. Out loud.”
“Yes,” he says. “Please.”
I reach down beneath my body to carefully undo the button on his trousers and slide a hand under the fabric of his boxers. I stroke him once, and he groans, hips lifting off the floor to press himself more firmly into my palm.
“Mmm, none of that,” I chastise gently, my other hand pressing his hips back down. “Stay still for me, Cain. Be a good boy for me.”
He whimpers. Full-on whimpers, the sound sending heat rolling all the way through my body. But despite the desperate look on his face, he does as I say, remaining perfectly still as I stroke him a few more times. Only his pleading eyes and furrowed brow betray his need.
“There you go,” I murmur. I spit into my palm before stroking him again, my slick hand sliding smoothly over his length.
He gasps, eyes rolling back. So sensitive, so responsive.
“You can control yourself, can’t you, Cain?
” He nods, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth, and I smile.
“Of course you can. You’ll be so good for me, won’t you?
” He nods again, but I stop the movement of my hand. “Answer me.”
“Yes,” he gasps, still nodding, like he can’t help the motion. “Yes. Please. I’ll be good.”
“I know you will.”
I know this is foolish. There are so many other things that should be on my mind right now. But I want so badly to feel something good. For both of us to feel something good, for once. And I suspect this is our last chance.
It’s a shame that he can’t touch me, with his wrists cuffed.
I want his hands all over me, undressing me.
Instead, I have to settle for my own. It’s hard to shed my baggy security uniform in a sexy way, but Cain gazes at me as if enraptured the entire time, so I suppose I do a decent job.
I undo my plain black bra and toss it aside, along with my panties, before settling on his lap again.
I reach down to tease myself as I grind against his rock-hard length. For once in my life, there is no shame in the way I take my pleasure. There’s no room for it between the press of our bodies, the tangle of our tongues.
Cain groans, his mouth traveling down my neck. Soft at first as he kisses the curve where it meets my shoulder, then harder as I encourage him with quiet sounds of pleasure, his teeth scraping against sensitive skin in a way that makes me shiver and moan.
I’m dripping for him by the time I lift myself up and guide him to my entrance.
I grab him by the hair and pull his head back so I can kiss him as I lower myself onto his length.
He groans into my mouth, and I swallow the noise eagerly, slowly pressing my hips down until he is fully seated within me.
He’s big enough to give me a pleasant stretch, filling me up perfectly.
The strangled whine he makes is the perfect reward as I settle against his lap.
I give him a moment to adjust, but only a moment.
“Willow,” he gasps. “I can’t— I can’t—”
“Yes, you can,” I murmur, as I start to ride him.
A steady rhythm, watching his face as I move atop him, admiring the way his lips part and his many eyes roll in pleasure.
He’s loud in the quiet, much louder than my own panting.
Every roll of my hips is met by a moan or a whimper, noises that become increasingly breathier and more desperate as I grab on to his shoulders and bounce in earnest.
“G-God, you feel good,” he gasps. “I don’t know how much longer I can last.”
“You’re gonna last until I tell you,” I say, nails digging into his skin, which draws a delicious whine out of him.
Fuck, he sounds good. He looks good, too, with desperation furrowing his brow and his eyes locked on me with a fervor that feels like worship.
My thighs shake as I lift myself up and grind down on his cock again and again, chasing my own pleasure from his body, using him until he’s teary and trembling from the struggle to hold himself back.
“Please,” he begs. The way he looks at me as he says it—red tears caught on his long lashes, face flushed and sweaty, lips parted and trembling—undoes me.
“Cum for me,” I demand, and he thrusts up into me as he does, burying his face in my shoulder, his handcuffed arms tightening around me to hold me close against his chest. The pulse of his cock inside me pushes me over the edge as well, and I cry out, grinding against him, clutching onto his wing in a desperate attempt to ground myself.
Afterward, we are both still, sweaty, gasping for air.
I remain on his lap until we both catch our breath and steal a messy, wet kiss before lifting myself off him to settle on the floor beside him.
I pull my panties back on, carefully pull his pants up and re-do the button for him.
His head lolls back against the wall, and he gazes at me with half-lidded eyes, so full of adoration that it makes my chest ache with something that might be guilt and might be love.
As I button up my security uniform again, I keep waiting for the shame to hit. Every time I have sex, or even pleasure myself, that Christian guilt inevitably bottoms out my stomach afterward. Surely I should feel worse after riding the devil’s own son in the basement of a cult.
But instead, I feel lighter. Stronger. This felt right, for us to find pleasure in the midst of chaos. A middle finger to the cult and all who would judge us, and a desperately deserved moment for us both to breathe.
As I finish dressing, I glance at Cain. My chest aches at the sight of him, hair ruffled and face flushed.
I stroke a gentle hand through his hair, and then along his wings.
“Why don’t you try to get some sleep?” I murmur, as he fights to keep his eyes open. It’s far from comfortable, sitting on the rough cement floor of the basement, but he’s clearly tired.
“Mhm,” he murmurs, completely pliant. “Keep going,” he says, barely audible, slurred by sleep’s approach. “Please.”
“I will. Sleep, Cain.”
He mumbles something else, but it trails off. His breathing eases, and his wings droop as slack as the rest of his body in sleep.
I keep my promise, and then some. Long after he’s fallen into slumber, I continue stroking my fingers over his feathers, marveling at how relaxed he looks as he dreams, and how soft his wings are beneath my hand.
He’s so vulnerable like this. I wonder if it occurred to him that I might kill him. But maybe that’s what he wants, despite his earlier words.
It would be easy to wrap my hands around his neck. Or cover his mouth and nose with the sack the cult draped over my head earlier. Maybe he would sleep through most of it. His hands are bound, and I know he wouldn’t fight me, even if he woke.
I could kill him. I should kill him.
I almost did it in the truck, on the way to his confinement. It would be a kindness now, after that bittersweet farewell we just shared.
But instead I sit and stroke his wings, telling myself just a little while longer, a little while longer… Until my eyes droop, and I find my head lolling against his shoulder.
I don’t fight it. I let myself drift. Maybe the world—or whatever will be left of it—will never forgive me for this, but I am tired of letting fate or God or whatever it may be dictate my life. Whatever comes tomorrow will come; for tonight, I am content to sleep in the arms of my Harbinger.