Chapter 56
Mason
The ocean was dark on all sides of me, currents twisting around my body beneath the waves. There was no burn in my lungs, no panic in my brain, just darkness surrounding my vision and strength building in my veins.
I didn’t deserve Dakota; that much was agonizingly clear to me.
She’d sacrificed her own life in an attempt to make me open up to her—and I still couldn’t do it.
If she knew the way I needed her, the way I clung to her inside my own pathetic mind…
if she could feel how desperately I was trying not to make her hate me the way I’d made Micah hate me…
I wasn’t sure I would be able to survive that same wound again.
Somehow, keeping her outside my wall felt like the right choice. Because I would die if she saw everything, saw all the worst parts of me, and left because of them. As if I didn’t fucking hate myself for it every single day.
I was aware of how that kind of pressure would ruin a relationship. The pressure to keep me alive by…not leaving me. Fuck.
Micah wanted to know why I still hadn’t killed Aamon, but I couldn’t explain it to him. Getting it done would require some effort, and I didn’t even know exactly where he was half the time, but that wasn’t the main reason.
I was scared.
Scared that Dakota would finally choose him, and if I didn’t have this connection, I would never get to see her again. He would hide her away at his place, lock her up in his darkness and I’d lose her. But if he still needed me, if I still served some purpose in their new life together…
Everything was about her. My solar system revolved around a different sun. One with sad green eyes and a soft voice.
I’d accidentally seen the shark tooth on his nightstand and it’d ripped my fucking guts out. Did she go to this beach with him too?
My blood surged, electricity skittering along my skin under the water.
I forced myself above the surface, sucking in large breaths of air, my skin starting to faintly glow with each inhale as my neon levels rapidly climbed up from near-zero.
Ultraneon.
When my skin glowed like this, it was called ultraneon.
In Heaven, it was essentially constant, but not on Earth. The only way I could get it was by artificially lowering and raising the concentration of neon in my blood.
Micah had told me I needed to be at his house today, and I hadn’t questioned it.
I never questioned it anymore, because firstly, he wouldn’t tell me, and secondly, I’d long since given up trying to decipher whatever pattern existed in his requests.
Especially since he’d been pissed at me last time I’d shown up.
It wasn’t about Aamon anymore. It was likely about Dakota, but he was so goddamn strange about her I didn’t know why he would want me around.
He was protective, but his protection wasn’t safety for her. He was dangerous in a way much more silent than me.
Since ultraneon was constant in Heaven, you could visually see when an angel used their powers through the slight lessening of their glow as they consumed neon.
That wasn’t the case on Earth, and Dakota wasn’t experienced enough with him to know the full scope of what he could do.
Half of it was so fucking subtle you’d never suspect a thing until you were years down the road and didn’t recognize your own mind anymore.
I hated her for wanting him. Even more so for letting him have her. I hated her so deeply, my blood vibrated with it. Hated everything she made me feel, hated how goddamn insane she made me, hated how she’d never fully be mine. No matter how badly I wanted it, I’d never own all of her.
But my hatred for Dakota paled in the face of what I felt towards Micah.
A+K FUCK
God, I could’ve ripped apart the world for the way the two of them made me feel together. It was the cruelest torture, the sickest torment, the most perversely disgusting game I could’ve played with myself, with her.
They killed me in ways I’d never be able to fully verbalize. Shredded all the most vital parts of my mind, my soul.
I loved fucking Dakota. She was beautiful and soft and small and perfect and good.
But sometimes I missed Micah’s dick. The hardness and largeness of his body. I didn’t have to like him to want that. Fuck. I need to not think about this.
I swam towards the shore, waves crashing over my head and shoulders, foam frothing around my body. Cold wind whipped over the dark surface of the ocean, carrying needle-like drops of saltwater. I trudged onto the sand with water pouring off me.
My SUV was parked at the top of the cliff, and I changed into dry clothes inside it, then drove to Micah’s with wet hair and tightness in my muscles. My veins ached with the slight accumulation of akrasia, but that discomfort was easily ignored.
Micah was sitting in his armchair on his laptop when I walked in, looking studious. I fought not to roll my eyes as I sat on the couch.
“Do you use a condom when you fuck her?” Micah asked in the absence of a greeting. He looked up from his screen, locking his eyes onto mine. His body was perfectly still, his expression indecipherable.
My heart stopped.
“What?”
“When you fuck her,” Micah said slowly, purposefully, “do you use a condom?”
I stared at him, trying to decipher anything in his gaze. But I couldn’t. He shut the laptop, set it on the coffee table.
“Fuck who?”
“Dakota.” He sat forward, resting his forearms on his spread thighs.
I didn’t move.
“No.”
The word was a gunshot.
His head tipped down, his gaze dropping to the space between his feet. Tension was bunched in his shoulders, his fingers twitching microscopically.
He gave a dry laugh.
“Fuck you.” His tone was humorless. “Fuck you.”
“Because I had sex with your student?” Rage roiled under the surface of my skin, churning in my blood, hot and crimson and burning. “I knew her before you did.”
“You think I couldn’t figure that out the second you saw her in my house?
” His voice got louder as he stood up, advancing on me.
I stood, too, putting myself eye to eye with him.
“If you honestly believed there was an instant where I didn’t know what both of you were trying to hide from me, you’re even more stupid than I thought.
I felt every ounce of that panic, in both of you. ”
“If you know that, then you know how she feels for me. She needs me.”
“She fears you.” His expression was far too calm.
“I don’t see how any of this concerns you.”
“You cuckolding me in my own house doesn’t concern me? I’m interested to hear your explanation on what would concern me, then. I’m interested to hear how you justified fucking her in my kitchen.”
“I don’t need to justify shit to you, Micah.”
“Because you’re the second choice.” He nodded like what I’d said fit perfectly into his explanation. His irises were cold, calculating. “Doesn’t matter what she does with you because she’ll choose me in the end.”
“Not if you erase her,” I responded, even knowing I couldn’t argue with what he was saying.
I had to try, to push on his own weaknesses, on all the reasons he’d wrecked our relationship, too.
“She’s going to learn what it feels like to have you in her head, and she’ll hate you for it. You think you can control that?”
“I’m sure she’d rather have that than you accidentally killing her if you—”
“You know how her pussy looks after she comes?” I asked, cutting him off, hating myself for being crass.
But I didn’t know what the fuck to say to him right now.
He was trying to provoke me and it was working.
“All swollen and needy? She gets so fucking wet but it’s still such a tight fit on my—” My voice cut out when Micah stole it, silencing me with his aspect.
It was maddening to interact with him now that he’d given up on his human-style life.
“And she gets that much wetter when she’s scared, right? Always goddamn strangling my cock when I fuck her like that,” Micah said smoothly, shocking me. “You think you know her better than I do, but you’re wrong.”
Though it shouldn’t have surprised me, it still did. I didn’t like thinking about him knowing Dakota in the same ways I did. Did he know how she felt about a gun in my hand? Had he ever felt her really fight him? I hoped to God he hadn’t.
“Why?” I questioned, grateful my voice was back. “Why make her do that to me?”
“Because I wanted to watch you sweat. Show you what’s mine.”
“Or you wanted to watch me come.”
“Didn’t take you very long, did it? You always used to come so fast. Faster than me.”
I gritted my teeth, looking away, feeling heat climb my throat. “And still, you’re the one licking my cum out of her mouth.”
“You want to be next?”
“Fuck off. You know I don’t.” I rolled my neck, irritated, huffing out a breath. Every inch of my skin burned with something dangerous, something electric. Yeah, he could fuck me up tonight if he wanted to. I was just volatile enough. Akrasia in my blood, rage in my mind.
“You’re so quick to anger,” he taunted.
I wished I hadn’t come here. I wished I hadn’t done a lot of things.
We were standing close enough to touch. All I had to do was reach my arm out. Lightning sparked on my knuckles, my fists aching to connect with Micah’s chest. I could hurt him so badly if I did that, if I punched right over his heart and fucked up his heartbeat with my electricity.
“Does she know all the ways you can break, Thrausian? Or are you hiding—”
I lunged forward and grabbed his throat, crushing his windpipe with my hand, cutting off his sentence. Micah was quick to retaliate, though, shoving me backward hard enough to make me stumble a few steps. The air was instantly charged with hatred so strong I felt it, like static on my skin.
“Yeah. Go ahead and choke me out. You’ve done worse,” he said.
The scars on my back burned, searing with white heat as my wings tore out of my back, ripping through my t-shirt. Micah yanked his own shirt off, wings rising behind him like a void.
The room felt cramped, too small with our wings taking up so much space.
I didn’t take a second to plan my actions.
“Fuck you,” I spit out as I slung my fist across his jaw. His following shove sent me crashing backwards into the wall, my wings knocking a lamp off the table and shattering the base.
“You’re pathetic,” he snarled. “You used to be able to control this shit.”
Because of you.
Micah was advancing on me fast, his fist raising to punch my fucking cheekbone. I threw my hands up just in time to block it, then dove forward and threw my shoulder into his stomach, sending us both tumbling to the ground.
“You’re going to use that against me?” I was breathing hard, fighting to get my words out while Micah struggled against me on the hardwood. I rolled us onto the carpet, slamming my fist into his cheek. Electricity flashed off my wings, scorching jagged black marks into the rug.
“Yeah. You motherfucker—”
“You used to like it, Micah.”
“I know that.” He was on top of me now, his hands wrapped around my throat, not tight enough to restrict my airflow, though. He knew me too well for that. I leaned into his hold and he loosened it. “Perverted piece of shit.”
I reached over and grabbed a piece of broken glass from the base of the lamp and slashed it across his stomach, blood and ichor flowing down his abs, soaking the waistband of his pants.
He grabbed my wrist and forced it down, the corner of the shard nicking the soft underside of my jaw, slicing my skin.
“That all you got? Huh?” he growled. “Finish it.”
Lightning bolted out of my fist as it met his ribs, just as his own fist cracked down on my nose.
I instantly felt the heat of my blood trickling down my face.
My wings flared out, sending a side table toppling over, everything that’d been on it scattering on the floor.
Micah’s wings were huge and dark over me as he straddled my stomach, hands circling my throat again.
“Finish it,” he said again.
I grabbed his wrists, but didn’t take his hands off my neck.
His eyelids went heavy, his fingers digging into my jaw.
His chest was heaving wildly, muscles straining against mine as he kept me pinned to the ground.
So quickly I might’ve missed it, his eyes flicked down at the bruises he’d given me, his hands collaring my throat, the blood and ichor pouring from my nose. I didn’t move.
The way he looked above me was yanking viciously on every memory I’d ever made with him. Us in Heaven, us deciding to fall. How I used to idolize him.
I could almost hear his voice sounding all raspy in the darkness in the middle of the night, my memories still too clear after so many years.
Micah abruptly pushed off me and got to his feet, leaving me panting on the floor in the center of the wreckage as his wings shuddered and disappeared, then he left the house in a rush. The door slammed and I rolled my skull back on the carpet, trying to catch my breath.
My palm coasted down my stomach to push against my hardening cock through my pants, the heel of my hand rubbing over the tip.
My abdomen was marred with bruises and blood, ichor smudged on my skin and running from my nose onto my lip.
All of it would heal over the next day, but the wounds were turning me the fuck on right now.
I wanted Micah to come back. Wanted to hurt him worse.
Wanted to fuck him. I’d pulled my punches a bit, and now I was wishing I hadn’t.
I was stronger than him. I’d broken a bone of his more times than I could count on two hands.
He was so easy to hate, such a strong wall to throw myself against, to grind down the roughness on my soul.
His cutting remarks echoed in my head, but I’d gotten under his skin too. I knew I had, or else he wouldn’t have left so abruptly.
Wait.
My mind was clear. I should’ve been inches from fracturing, but I wasn’t.
Micah had stopped it. In the midst of fighting me, he’d protected me.
Everything turned over in my head, getting darker, heavier. I stood up, no longer pleased with the bruises or cuts on my body, no longer wanting Micah to come back. He couldn’t do that to me anymore, not when he was the one to fucking leave me. I’d never be grateful for him again.