Chapter 9
Aurelius
The high fashion industry I knew so well is based on two rules: the clothes you wear have to either make people want to be you or just want you. No matter if they desired to have you in the bedroom, as an arm candy, or as a connection to contracts and riches. This was a basic fact of life.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there are always tricks to make yourself more aesthetically pleasing. With my performance today I had a very hard task in front of me. Charming the whole room full of demons and angels wasn’t a simple thing, especially when I had to compete with the likes of Michael and Lucifer, both of them peerless beauties in their own right. I knew where my strengths lay, so instead of trying for an angelic beauty or demonic savagery, I opted for something more playful and showy.
Waiting for the signal that everyone has been corralled to watch me and Hellion was ready to play a dutiful stage hand, I struck the opening pose.
The light in the club vanished only to flare to life behind me, filling the closed purple curtains around the stage with brightness and allowing my spectators to see my mysterious silhouette with my wings spread wide. As the tips of feathers sketched a graceful arc, sensual music started to play. A slow dance of mystery and anticipation followed, until my wings dropped along with the beat, the wind from the gesture snapping the curtains open.
I couldn’t see who gasped at my reveal with the lights dimmed once more, but I was immensely pleased to already have such an effect on my captive audience. My elaborate outfit wasn’t what they expected for a striptease, but it only made the spectacle more interesting. The layers of my ensemble were a tribute to a joke I made early in my acquaintance with Abaddon, when I told him I could wear one expensive layer or seven layers of cheap plastic and I would be underdressed only in one of those instances. Abaddon told me he wasn’t either a pimp or the Emperor of China for me to dress like that, and I used that opening to shamelessly flirt with him.
Now here I was, all seven layers on, even though they were no plastic but high-quality materials. What hid below them was a treat. My body moved, becoming one with music as scarves decorated with glittering golden stars flowed around me before I turned around and threw them up, letting them catch on barely visible hooks, creating an illusion of the stars raising to the firmament as Hellion pulled the material up. The scarf’s absence revealed the dark brocade on my body was topped with gold at the shoulders, my back a beautiful scene of a sun staring to peek from the darkness. I let the fabric slide slowly down my arms, revealing a gradient of pink, purple, and orange, the colors of the sky at dusk. With each layer, I continued the story of the rising sun and I had the crowd at the edges of their seats, dozens of eyes watching my every move. I knew the first hint of skin peeking from beneath the fabric drove them crazy and I luxuriated in the feeling, milking the anticipation with deliberate slowness of an artist enjoying the rush of power.
I teased. I gloated. I invited the stares.
In the end, when the sun peaked and then set, all I was dressed in was gold and my pride.
For this final act I have donned luxurious lingerie that made me look like a million bucks. The fabric looked so delicate it may as well be spun from the sun itself and the golden chains covered my body in an intricate pattern, the glinting metal catching the light every time I moved. The soft tinkle was a fitting addition to the music, which became slower, more sensual, underscoring the thrum of rising arousal in my body. I was already as naked as could be without showing my dick, but that wasn’t enough for me.
I closed my eyes, enraptured by my own beauty. By the power to make those powerful beings in front of me feel. Whether I inspired positive or negative emotions, jealousy, or lust, I didn’t care. I just wanted to be everything they could think about for this moment. For nothing more than me to exist. I was special. I deserved it. And I deserved to have some fun.
I wanted more.
My eyes locked with Abaddon. He was sitting in the first row, his red gaze fixed on me. When I professed my hand to him, he didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, but he gave me permission to do everything that I desired today, so he accepted my invitation with no hesitation. I pulled Abaddon onto the scene and pushed him into a throne-like chair which Hellion managed to sneak onto the podium, settling myself in his lap.
“Touch me,” I demanded.
Ever reliable, Abaddon ran his hands down my back, the golden chains tinkling merrily in the wake of his touch. I shivered.
“Like this?” Abaddon’s deep voice asked.
“More. Satisfy me. Show them all what they are missing.”
My lips got captured in a thorough, possessive kiss. Abaddon made sure I barely had any air in my lungs before we separated.
“Turn around,” Abaddon commanded, the beginnings of a growl in his voice.
As I followed his order, I could feel how bothered he already was after my performance. I squirmed on purpose, making him hiss and clamp a restraining hand on my thigh.
“Is that what you want everyone to see? How much of a brat you can be? Very well, I can show them my skills in brat taming.”
I jerked in his grasp as he went straight for my nipples. Not expecting such savagery out of the gate, I cried out as he clamped his fingers in a vise around one of my nipples and pulled. Now I trashed because I couldn’t help it, the teasing gone from my mind as Abaddon pinched, scratched, squeezed, found a thousand different ways to torment my nipples.
Oh fuck, with my tits in such an oversensitive state, what I had planned next was going to hurt so much.
I whimpered when I heard the approaching footsteps. Well, I did it to myself. Now there was no other way but to commit.
“Don’t you think… ah… that my outfit is missing something?” I gasped out. “All that gold around my chest but nothing on my nipples… you should change that.”
Hellion took it as his cue to step closer.
Abaddon’s gaze lifted slowly to watch him in a manner of a territorial beast. On the cushion my friend was holding lay two golden rings bejeweled with tiny diamond stars and a hollow piercing needle.
Abaddon’s eyes widened, then narrowed as he took it in.
“Is that angelic power on the needle? Whose?!”
“Ah. Raphael assured me it will be easier than brute-forcing such a precise wound with demonic power,” I said, wincing at the reaction.
“But it can still be done without it?”
I nodded.
Abaddon reached for the needle, and it was immediately encased in demonic power. The angelic grace burned like a flame for a moment before it vanished, no trace of Raphael’s power left. The volatile reaction left the needle hot to the touch.
“You are mistaken if you thought even for a moment that I would allow any trace of anyone else’s power to enter your body,” Abaddon growled. I gulped, realizing what deep shit I was in. “If I have to make it hurt to remind you that you are mine, so be it.”
As Abaddon arranged me sideways, so he had perfect access to my already abused nipples and raised the still slightly steaming needle up, I whimpered.
“Who do you belong to?”
“You!”
As the sharp tip pressed against my sensitive nub and pushed, I found biting my lips wasn’t helping, so instead I babbled.
“You, I belong to Abaddon, Second Prince of Hell, ah… oh fuck… it hurts, it hurts… Lord of Desolation…”
I cursed my demonic body, whose skin was tougher than regular humans. Because of that, it took longer for me before the needle peaked out on the other side. Abaddon set the jewelry at the end of the needle and pulled it back. Somehow that was even more excruciating and my breath caught on a scream.
The pleased rumble Abaddon let out when the ring finally dangled from my nipple, a trickle of blood flowing down my chest, set heat growing deep in my gut. This reaction was why I had done this. Seeing how pleased claiming me so publicly made Abaddon lit an answering fire in me and the pain of the experience crested to settle into a deep throb of a claim well done.
The second nipple hurt as much as the first but this time Abaddon graciously put two of his fingers in my mouth, letting me muffle my shouts and groans on them, my teeth clamping on the offered flesh, though I was pretty sure Abaddon wasn’t in more pain than me. Feeling my reaction in such a visceral way pleased my lover. It was similar to the way he sometimes liked to hold my wrist down during our lovemaking to feel how fast my pulse was hammering. I could hide nothing from him, so I didn’t even try.
I let the experience take me under and by the time we were finished and Abaddon was licking blood off my pierced nipples, I practically forgot we had an audience at all. I was ready for Abaddon to fuck me on the throne. I had even prepared myself, the jeweled plug keeping me open and waiting, but this unexpected turn proved to be more than I could handle. Suddenly, the eyes bothered me.
“I’m yours. Only yours. I don’t want them to see me,” I whispered frantically.
Abaddon smiled at me and I found myself in a princess carry.
“Show’s over,” was all Abaddon said as he carried me to our room.
I hid my smile in his chest.
Abaddon carefully pulled all the golden finery—sans the new piercings—off, and cuddled me, avoiding putting pressure on my throbbing nipples.
“Aren’t you disappointed?” I asked, when I felt more like myself.
“Why would I be, sunshine?”
“Because I had all those plans… I had boasted about how amazing the show was going to be and I couldn’t follow through. I left you high and dry and I teased everyone… and ended up not delivering on those promises.”
“You were magnificent,” Abaddon argued, his brows drawn together. “The spectators were spellbound and I… your trust is the best gift I could ever get. Sexual acts pale in comparison to you baring your soul to me, putting the tools to hurt you in my hands, accepting my jealousy…”
“I thought I would want everyone to see me but…”
“There’s intimacy only the two of us can understand,” my lover said, pressing his forehead against mine in a gesture that felt more intimate than a kiss. “I don’t begrudge you wanting us to be alone in a moment of deep vulnerability. In fact, you requesting I whisk you away pleased me greatly, for I wanted you only to myself.”
“You have me. What are you going to do with me?” I tried to put my normal flirtatiousness in my voice, but I was emotionally exhausted after that scene.
“I’m going to hold you… and we are going to sleep,” Abaddon said firmly.
Ah, he could always see through my bullshit, and it was immensely gratifying to be able to depend on that. I let myself relax further until I fell into a dreamless sleep in his arms.