Chapter 3
Kate
Merna is chatting away with a customer at the counter, bagging up several large volumes as I get settled back into work.
“Now this one you’ll want to read before next Wednesday, that’s the full moon, dear, and you’ll want to do that spell we talked about right around midnight.
It’ll be nice and strong then!” She says with excitement.
The customer thanks her, spots me, and waves as they leave.
Merna sees me and gestures for me to come over.
Before I can ask her what that conversation was all about, I see my friend Clara come into the shop.
Clara and I went to high school in California together, and she had just escaped a horrible marriage when I told her she could use my family’s old cabin that I had inherited to hide.
I embrace her, so happy my friend is healthy and thriving in this small town. “Clara! It’s so good to see you! I have those books you ordered right here.”
As I start getting Clara’s order ready, Merna introduces herself.
“Hi! I’m Merna, your local Occult expert!”
Clara giggles. “Wow, really? That’s awesome. Do you know if the bookstore carries anything on, um, monsters? Like, from long ago?”
Merna scrunches up her face as she thinks. “I think I did see a book like that, hold on, let me go check real quick!” She dashes away to the corner where I was trapped with Travis just this morning.
“Monsters, huh?” I say, wiggling my eyebrows suggestively at her. To my surprise, her face turns a deep crimson.
“Kate, you have to promise not to tell a soul.” She is close to me now, whispering over the counter at me.
“Well, I didn’t tell anyone that you were hiding in my family cabin from your psycho ex-husband for seven months, I think I can handle this!” I say, laughing as I bag up her books.
“Okay, okay. You remember when I told you that Mark got arrested for trying to steal the deputy’s gun, and then they ended up locking him up in a prison psych ward because he said he saw this huge horned beast-man in the cabin?” She looks anxiously around to ensure no one is near us.
“Yeah, I remember.” My heartbeat is ratcheting up, a sick feeling twisting in my stomach.
She leans over further, her lips nearly pressed to my ear. “He wasn’t lying, Kate. His name is Asterion, and he lives in the woods behind your family cabin. For, I don’t know, ages! He says he remembers your great-great-great-great grandfather building it! He saved me.” She finishes breathlessly.
I stare at her. “What.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I swear I’m -”
“Clara, last night I accidentally summoned a demon, or maybe a fallen angel, into my bedroom.”
Clara’s jaw drops open, and just as she is about to respond, Merna comes back with another heavy tome. “This might be what you’re looking for; this one is more of an encyclopedia of all sorts of monsters, demons, and ancient forgotten gods from all over.”
“Thanks, Merna!” Clara says cheerfully, despite the fact that we both just admitted to each other that monsters and demons are very real.
“Yes, thank you, Merna. And thank you so much for watching the store while I went to take a break, it means a lot to me.”
Merna’s look softens at me. “Of course, dear, you work too hard. You know, my nephew is single, I could give him your number?” She says hopefully.
“Oh, I appreciate that, but I’m -”
“Just so busy, I know, dear.” She finishes my sentence before I can. She pats my hand gently before she leaves.
I turn back to Clara. “So, what now?”
Clara shrugs. “Asterion is the best thing that ever happened to me, so I suggest you take the bull by the horns and don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“Wait…have you two…”
“Kate, it’s like I’m going through puberty all over again, but in the best way. I can’t believe I had to wait until my thirties to discover my sexual awakening!” She giggles. “Have you and this demon-angel, you know?”
“No! Well…I might have kissed him earlier.”
“And! How was it?” She is squeal-whispering now.
“Shhh!” I pause. “Oh my god, Clara, I almost passed out from just a kiss. But it didn’t go any further. I can’t get involved with a demon!”
“For god’s sake, why?”
I shift my gaze away. “I just don’t have time for all that. I’m busy with the store, and it's just me here, and it just never works out.” I say indignantly.
Clara rolls her eyes at me now. “Listen to me, Kate, you’re never going to get what you want hiding behind work all the time. You need to demand what you want. There was a point where I literally grabbed Asterion by his horns and hooked my legs -”
“Clara!” I stop her, waving my hands in her face, and laughing. “Okay, okay, I get it. I do not need the play-by-play!”
She is still serious. “I’m just saying!”
“I get it, really.”
She takes her bag of books from me. “Text me if you need pointers.” And she’s gone with a wink.
???
CLARA'S WORDS ARE echoing in my ears as I close up the store, on time for once, and make my way back to my apartment. I’m wondering what Zera did all day while I was gone for the afternoon, but that is quickly made clear because just as I walk through the door, he is pulling a magnificent pot pie carefully from the oven and placing it in the center of the table.
“Are you some kind of demon chef? How are you making all this food?” The smell is pulling me toward the table, my mouth watering in anticipation.
“I am very old. I learned a few things along the way in life.” He closes the oven. “And I am not a demon, by the way.”
I stop wafting the steam to my nose. “You’re not?”
He is standing beside me suddenly. “No.”
It seems rude to ask what he is. I’ve gotten that question too many times myself. “So, you’re…?”
“A grigori.” He does not elaborate. I make a mental note to find a book in the Occult section of the bookstore later to look this term up, but I’m distracted because his hand is playing with the curly baby hairs at the nape of my neck, sending delightful shivers down my back.
“I do not want to talk about me.”
“Mmm?” My eyes are closed, and I can’t help but relax into him.
“I want to discuss Kate.”
“Oh? What about me?” No one has ever massaged my shoulders before. He is standing behind me now, chest pressed into my back. I feel his lips against my earlobe, gently suckling, and an involuntary sigh releases from me before I can stop it.
“About how you are tired and deserve a hot bath.”
“A bath? But what about the pie you made? It will get cold.” Lame excuses, I am full of them.
His lips have found my neck and are gently suckling an area of my body I was never even aware of before today. “It needs to cool.”
“For how long?” How can I possibly be cock-blocking my own self?
“An hour.”
I freeze. A whole hour. A bath. Me naked. Clara’s words float back to me: take the bull by the horns!
I don’t even bother turning around to face him; I just begin walking to my bedroom. My heart is beating fast, but I don’t give my brain a chance to second-guess anything and start stripping off my clothes as I walk, dropping them as I go. Naked, I stop at the doorway, turn and look at him.
It’s his turn to be in shock, and his need is written all over his face, and his hard cock, I’m pleased to see.
As I pause there, we lock eyes, and I know I’m a goner.
In that split second, he is a blur rushing to me on nothing but soundwaves, and then he is instantly pressed against me, wings surrounding my naked form.
I remember the first time I was ever naked in front of the opposite sex.
We were nineteen, and I had only been at Coldwater Springs for not even a year after running away.
Back then, Clara and I talked on the phone constantly.
I was so lonely and scared. The guy was no one special, and I don’t even remember his name.
But we were fooling around in my family’s cabin, as I was one of the few young people in town with their own place.
The fumbled misses as we tried to remove our clothes, teeth accidentally smacking together, and when I finally was naked, he just stared at me, utterly confused.
I waited for what seemed like an eternity, but he froze.
His dick was limp, and we sat on the old couch in front of the fire for a long time before he started putting his clothes back on and he left.
The message to me, back then, was received loud and clear.
What I had to offer did not inspire passion.
The next time I had sex, I kept most of my clothes on, but the guy in question this time was just as clueless as I was.
He came within two seconds and then also left.
Over the years, there were one or two more encounters, each more disappointing than the last.
Zera looks down at me now, and I am almost afraid to see his face, but then I feel a hand under my chin as he urges me to look at him.
Maybe I can read energy too. No one has ever looked at me this way, as though my body were a temple he is there to worship.
There is a need in his eyes, as though I am water and he has been dying of thirst for centuries.
He kneels before me now, and I cannot think.
He rubs his face on my belly, the one area I have tried to cover for years, and there he is, pressing his face into it, inhaling my scent as though there is nourishment to be gained from it.
He suckles on my hip bones and my tummy and lifts my heavy breasts to lick underneath them with his long tongue.
He is so tall that even with him kneeling, his wings easily cover us entirely.
A wicked thought enters my mind. Something I have read about in the novels that the Coven book club reads, but I have never experienced myself. Do I dare? I can’t ask, the words won’t form, but now that the thought is in my mind, I cannot let it go.
I see my own hands brush against his horns, so thick and curved elegantly around his face.
I hear a gasp, and I instantly know he can feel me touching this area that seems like there would be no nerve endings.
My leg lifts slightly and over his shoulder, opening me to him, and as I look down and his eyes meet mine, there is a gleam in them that I never thought I would see.
He holds my gaze as his long forked tongue darts out and takes a long, deliberate lick along my folds. I feel my legs crumble just at this first sensation, but then I feel support beneath me, hands gripping my ass, and the scratching sensation of his claws digging into me.
Another luxurious lick, and my head falls back.
His tongue is inside me now, and I’m losing all control, yet in control as my hands still grasp his horns, steering him into me.
My hips twitch with need. I daren’t. I couldn’t.
Could I? My foot presses into his back, urging him inside me further, my hips begin to buck and ride against him, knees opening myself wider to him.
I cry out at his magnificent mouth pressed to my cunt, just as needy as I am.
He is moaning, moaning, against me, causing vibrations all along my center, and the small part of my brain that truly believed I was an unwanted slug is being squashed to oblivion.
Zerachiel is thrusting his long, forked tongue into me, pressing into a spot just inside that I did not even know was there.
The noises alone are driving me wild, and the books I read of men begging for a lick suddenly make sense.
I’m gasping for breath as a hot, prickly sensation comes over me.
It’s almost painful, but not, starting at the tips of my toes, it quickly travels along my legs.
Thinking about how we must look, Zera kneeling on the floor, his two strong arms holding me up to his mouth, my legs spread, practically encircling his shoulders as he eats me like a starving man.
As though my pussy is providing the sustenance he needs to live.
That very thought sends me over the edge, and I come so hard that my eyes cannot see, I feel only the pressure, and a sound is coming from my throat that I don’t even recognize is me, and as just as suddenly, I am limp.