Chapter Five #2
“Don’t move again,” came the deep, pleasurable vibrations up my very core, “or I’ll stop.
And we don’t want that, do we?” The low growl of his warning cut through the center of me, crawling from my dripping entrance up my spine and wrapping its tendrils around whatever remained of my numb, lost mind.
I obeyed. I played the role of perfect statue, enjoying the new element of domination and performance as I acted out what it might be like if I weren’t being destroyed in the most depraved, indulgent way just below my line of sight.
I maintained perfect eye contact with the lecturer—arguably too much eye contact—as my vision began to blur and water from warning signs of pending gratification.
My entire body acted as a single muscle, every part of me clenched as I sat in breathless, aching tension.
Any tenderness was gone. The gentle teasing had disappeared.
I was a meal to be silently devoured, a thrill to be relished by no one but myself as the world around me remained caught in its mundanity.
I struggled to keep quiet as he pushed me closer and closer to the end. I saw my incredible, satisfying release in terms of percentages as he carried me from sixty, to seventy, to eighty. He knew exactly how to push me over, as in a marvelous move of demonic delectation, he—
“Marlow?”
What? He never called me that.
Was it my professor? My classmates?
I heard my name called again but couldn’t make sense of the sound.
The scent changed. No longer was I under the fluorescents of a classroom engulfed in the mossy scents of the forest floor, but there was something sharper. Something like cloves and thieves’ oil…
September 12, age 26
My name dragged me up as if I were a corpse who’d been buried alive. The word echoed through the earth, grabbing me by whatever rope tethered me to reality as it lassoed me into consciousness. I groaned in a blur of groggy confusion, climax just within reach.
“Marlow, are you okay?”
I blinked rapidly as I struggled to make sense of the harsh white light and surrounding shadows. My body jostled lightly back and forth from the hum of a machine. It took a moment for my eyes to focus before I realized we were still in the car.
I blinked awake, stretching out of my slumped position. “Are we there?”
I looked up into the concerned eyes, the gold-brown hair, the strong jaw, the protector’s posture of the figure silhouetted above me.
“Silas?” I asked, wiping the smear of drool from the corner of my mouth.
He put a hand on my face, leaching whatever remained of my drunken buzz and hangover alike with his heavenly powers. Sobriety filled me like an unwilling bucket of cold water.
“You sounded like you were having a nightmare,” he said.
I sat up, pole-straight. His hand fell away as I took stock of my surroundings.
I was still in the same black crop top and sweatpants I’d been wearing since we’d stumbled through my apartment after our release from the Canaanites.
Despite the thick fabric of my pants, I didn’t miss the uncomfortable puddle that had worked its way between my legs.
There were two minutes left on Kirby’s GPS.
“I was dreaming,” I said hoarsely. “It was a memory.”
My entire body remained on the precipice of orgasm, denied climax at the final moment of one of my favorite memories. Whether it had been the gin, or the ferocity with which Caliban had held me as he’d said even if I forced him to say goodbye, he’d never truly let me go, my brain had clung to him.
“It really seemed like you needed saving,” Silas insisted.
My cheeks flushed. I was too embarrassed to make eye contact with anyone else in the car. I was no longer drunk, nor did my head or stomach show any signs of misery, but I was still aching. “I didn’t,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Silas asked. “I could have sworn you needed me.”
For fuck’s sake. I tried to ignore the double entendre in his words.
“What I need is a minute to myself,” I said, holding up a shaky index finger.
His voice dropped a register. “Anything I can help with?”
My entire body heated. I was too trapped to throw a punch, but I knew for certain that he’d done this on purpose. “Oh my god.”
“What?” he asked, one hand still on my inner thigh from where he’d jostled me awake.
Nia and Kirby were too mortal to sense what had occurred, and Azrames, for whatever reason, was allowing the torture to take place.
“You’re an absolute asshole,” I said, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes.
One more minute, and we’d reach our destination. Kirby had already exited the highway and was navigating their way through a neighborhood that had been hit particularly hard by the recession.
Silas shot me a wink, all but confirming that he’d shaken me awake to do little more than ruin my perfect release, the well-deserved reward from my favorite memory.
“I hate you,” I murmured so only he could hear, hurling every ounce of angst from my ruined orgasm I could muster.
Leaning toward me, he murmured his response into my hair. “But you sided with me nonetheless.”
I focused my attention outside on the plywood over the windows, the slumping, chain-linked fences, the weeds popping through the sidewalk as we inched toward our destination.
My peripherals snagged on the rearview mirror.
Forehead creased, I stared into the mirror, struggling to make sense of what I saw.
Everything was normal. Everything was safe. Everything was fine.
Except…
My blood chilled.
Two sets of eyes looked back at me—and neither pair belonged to someone I expected to see. I opened my mouth to say something, but the barbed, pained surprise caught in my throat.
Two men stared back—muscled, armed, and unfamiliar. The claustrophobic cab filled with the pungent scents of sharp spice, all oxygen sucked from the Jeep. My vision blurred. My lungs screamed. I gripped the seats in front of me with bruising strength as the men took the air, the light, the life.
I was too frantic to make a sound. My eyes bulged. My spine buckled under the weight.
There was a din of chaos in the car as the others began to yell.
Kirby swerved, though I was barely aware of the car’s chaotic path. Nia was shouting at our men. Azrames may have been trying to clap me on the back, though if he was, I was too far gone to receive the help.
A painful, high-pitched ringing shattered me from the inside out. A shadowy vignette pressed in on my vision as the world began to dim.
Silas was wrong. We didn’t have three days. We didn’t even have three hours. The angels were here, and I was dying.
I was a trout, lips moving uselessly as I was held above water.
I tried to scream for help, to beg them to stop, to rebuke Heaven, to chant a prayer backward, something, but they’d handicapped me so totally that I was rendered utterly helpless as the last bits of color and light faded into a pinprick.
Five of us were in the Jeep, yet I was completely alone with two cruel entities watching me die.
The car swerved again. Kirby was screaming, but the sound didn’t reach me.
I turned to punch the men, but they weren’t there.
They were only in the mirror, staring impassively as my life flashed before my eyes.
One looked at me with Michelangelonian grace, blond curls hanging to his shoulders, icy blue eyes devoid of emotion.
The other might have been a Spanish saint, dark expression unfeeling.
The last two faces I would ever see.
They’re in the mirror. It was the only piece of data I had.
The others shouted. They clapped. They did their best to intervene, but they didn’t know the battle I was facing, and I was out of time.
With my last burst of strength, I dove for the gap between Azrames’s legs and wrapped my fingers around the neck of the tequila bottle resting at his feet. I fought through the others as I hoisted it high and smashed it into Kirby’s mirror.
The plastic detached, tumbling into the space between my friends, but the glass did not break. I summoned every ounce of strength as I grappled for the hardware, wrapping my fingers around it only to smash it against any hard surface I could reach. Still, the glass did not break.
It was enough. They understood.
“The mirrors aren’t sealed!” Azrames shouted.
Their revelation didn’t give me any relief.
My lungs burned. My ears popped. Darkness pressed in.
I continued to bang it against the dashboard as hard as I could, unable to explain to Nia and Kirby what I was doing.
I heard the glass crack, but the attackers continued to glare back at me from the broken portal.
A sharp pain exploded from my hand, but I was too dizzy to see the cut.
Azrames wrapped his arms around me, yanking me into the back seat as hard as he could. He dove forward with his spare hand shielding Nia’s eyes as Silas did the same for Kirby. In an instant, the mirrors shattered into a fine dust.
I sucked in a breath with painful strength. Kirby threw the Jeep into park, and all four doors burst open. My world spun on its axis, scarcely registering the heat, the scent of grass, the wooden buildings, or the tall, white chapel tagged in neon graffiti.
Azrames yanked me out of the car, pulling me onto the sidewalk as he demanded, “What happened?”
Silas joined us outside, eyes cast to the empty frames where the mirrors had been only moments before.
“Heaven happened.”