Chapter 31
We end up meeting before the time limit though, with an urgent summons from Lysander.
The cathedral smells like decay and old incense. Broken stained glass crunches under my boots as I follow the seven angels deeper into the ruins, past rotting pews and crumbling stone columns covered in centuries of grime.
Divine power presses against my skin, old and angry and still potent despite the building's decay. This place remembers what it was. What it housed. And it doesn't like what it's become. I wonder if the place will tell me that as strongly every time I arrive.
"Here," Kael says, stopping in front of what used to be the altar. Now it's just broken marble and blackened stone, but there's a person lying there, an old woman, maybe ninety, breathing in shallow gasps.
"She's dying," I say, moving closer. I can see the contract wrapped around her, golden chains that pulse with each fading heartbeat. "Lust. This is one of Lysander's."
"Was mine," Lysander corrects, leaning against a pillar with forced casualness.
His purple eyes are fixed on the woman with unusual intensity.
"Eighty-three years ago, she made a deal.
Youth, beauty, desire, all the things a young woman thinks she wants.
The contract should have ended when she died naturally, and her soul would come to me. "
"But someone's been taking them before you can collect," I finish. Through the contract, I can feel the lust, decades of accumulated desire, compressed and concentrated into something dark and hungry. "How did you find her?"
"We've been tracking the pattern," Seraph says from where he stands near the altar, his mirror eyes reflecting candlelight from the few candles still burning in the cathedral.
"Your grandmother's research gave us locations, dates.
This woman, Margaret Rousseau, is on the list. She should die tonight.
And when she does, whoever has been stealing souls will come for her. "
"Unless we get there first," Croesus adds. He's standing beside me, close enough that I can feel his warmth through our binding. "You need to break the contract now, before she dies. Before they can collect her."
I look down at Margaret. Her eyes are closed, her breathing labored. She's unconscious, maybe hours from death.
"She can't consent," I say. "She doesn't even know I'm here."
"The contract is fulfilled," Dorian says gently from near the back of the cathedral. "She's lived her full life. Had her youth, her beauty, her desires. The terms are complete. You're not breaking an active deal, you're severing the collection clause."
It's a technicality, but he's right. The contract is done. All that's left is the payment, her soul going to Lysander when she dies.
"If I break it, she goes free?" I ask. "Her soul goes wherever it's supposed to go naturally?"
"Heaven, probably," Lysander says with a slight grimace. "She was a good woman, despite the vanity. Led a decent life. Hurt no one but herself in her obsession with beauty." His voice softens. "She deserves better than being stolen by whoever is collecting our souls."
I kneel beside Margaret, place my hands on either side of her head where the contract's chains are thickest. The lust is overwhelming even before I touch it, eighty-three years of desire, of wanting to be wanted, of hunger for admiration and touch.
"This is going to be strong," I warn the angels. "Lust this old, this concentrated, I'll need to purge it immediately. I won't have time for ritual."
Through the binding, I feel Croesus's understanding. His acceptance.
"I'll help you," he says simply.
"We'll all watch," Seraph adds with a slight smile. "Consider it educational."
I want to argue, but there's no time. Margaret's breathing is getting shallower. If she dies before I break the contract, whoever is stealing souls will come, and we'll lose our chance to catch them.
I take a breath. Center myself. Grab my blade to cut my hand, then as gently as possible, hers.Then I pull.
The absorption is immediate and devastating.
Eighty-three years of lust slams into me like a freight train.
Not the diffused, mostly manageable desire I've purged before, but concentrated need, raw and hungry and absolutely overwhelming.
It burns through my veins, settles in my core, and suddenly I'm aware of every inch of my skin, every breath, every sensation magnified a thousandfold.
I gasp, my hands fisting in the fabric of my shirt. The contract disintegrates beneath my palms, the sin transferring completely into me.
Margaret takes a deep, shuddering breath, the first clear one since we arrived. The golden chains vanish from around her, and through my lust-hazed vision, I see her face relax. Peaceful.
Free.
But I'm burning.
My body temperature spikes. Sweat breaks out across my skin. Every nerve ending comes alive with hypersensitivity, the brush of my clothes against my skin feels like torture, too much and not nearly enough.
I need… I need...
Through the haze, I'm aware of the angels watching.
Can feel their attention like soft touches.
Seraph's fascinated curiosity. Idris's analytical interest. Kael's heat answering the fire in my blood.
Lysander's hunger recognizing its own sin reflected back.
Dorian's wanting. Even Caspian's attention, pulled from his usual apathy by the sheer intensity of what's happening.
And Croesus. Croesus, who's already moving toward me, who knows exactly what I need because we're bound and he can feel the lust burning through me like wildfire.
"Raven." His voice cuts through the roar in my head. "Look at me."
I force my eyes open. He's kneeling in front of me, I didn’t even know I’d fallen, gold eyes blazing even though he can't see. But he doesn't need to see. He can feel everything I'm feeling through the binding.
"I need–" The words catch in my throat. "Croesus, I need…"
"I know." His hands cup my face, and even that simple touch sends electricity racing across my skin. "Let me help you."
"Here? In front of–"
"Yes." His thumb brushes my lower lip, and I barely suppress a moan. "Right here. Right now. Before this kills you."
Through the binding, I feel his possessiveness flare. He wants this. Wants to claim me in front of the other six, wants them to see that I'm his, that when I need someone it's him I turn to.
And maybe that should bother me. Maybe I should care that six fallen angels are about to watch me fall apart.
But the lust is too strong, and I need him too much, and I stopped caring about dignity somewhere around the time the sin started eating me alive.
"Yes," I whisper. "Please."
He pulls me closer, his mouth finding mine in a kiss that's both gentle and claiming. I kiss him back desperately, my hands fisting in his shirt, trying to get closer, closer, never close enough.
The lust approves. Wants more. Wants everything.
Croesus breaks the kiss, his breathing ragged. "We're going to do this slow. Controlled. I'm not going to let this sin control you."
"Can't, can't be slow."
"Yes, we can." His hands slide down to my waist, steadying me. "Trust me."
I do. Through the binding, I can feel his determination to keep me grounded, to help me through this without letting the lust consume me completely.
His hands go to the hem of my shirt. "May I?"
The fact that he's asking permission even now, even with six angels watching and eighty-three years of lust trying to tear me apart from the inside, that does something emotionally visceral to me.
"Yes."
He pulls my shirt up slowly, deliberately. The fabric drags against my oversensitized skin, and I gasp at the sensation. The cool air of the cathedral hits my exposed skin, and I shiver despite the heat burning through me.
Croesus tosses my shirt aside. His hands hover over my skin, not quite touching. "You're beautiful."
"Can't, need you to touch me."
"I will." His fingers trail up my sides, feather-light. "But not yet. Not until you breathe."
"I am breathing."
"No, you're panting. Breathe, Raven. Deep breath. That's it."
I force myself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. The lust screams at the delay, but Croesus is right, I need to stay in control of this, not let the sin take over completely.
"Good." His hands move to my back, finding the clasp of my bra. "Again."
I breathe. He unclasps it easily, slides the straps down my shoulders. The fabric falls away, and suddenly I'm exposed from the waist up in front of seven fallen angels.
Seraph makes a soft sound, approval or hunger, I can't tell.
Beautiful Idris's voice whispers in my mind. Croesus is a fortunate male.
"She's mine," Croesus says aloud, his voice carrying a warning. His hands finally, finally touch my bare skin, palms sliding up my ribcage to cup my breasts.
I arch into the touch with a moan I can't suppress. His thumbs brush over my nipples, and electricity shoots straight to my core.
"That's it." His mouth finds my neck, kissing and biting as his hands work my breasts. "Let me take care of you."
"More."
"Patience." But his hands move faster now, less gentle. Squeezing, teasing, driving me higher.
Behind us, I hear Kael growl low in his throat, feel the temperature in the room spike.
"Control yourself," Seraph snaps at him.
"She's…" Kael's voice is strained. "The lust is…"
Affecting all of us. Idris finishes. This is what eighty-three years of concentrated desire feels like. And she's channeling all of it.
"Fascinating," Dorian breathes.
Croesus ignores them all, his focus entirely on me. His hands leave my breasts, sliding down to the waistband of my pants. "These need to come off."
"Yes."
He unbuttons them slowly, slides the zipper down with deliberate care. Then he's pushing them down my hips, taking my underwear with them, stripping me bare in the middle of the cathedral floor.
I should feel vulnerable. Exposed. But the lust has burned away any shame. All I feel is need.