Sinful

by Jenica Saren

At the touch of our lips, a sharp zing of electricity shot through me, different from before, almost painful.

  When our lips parted and our hands fumbled around one another, each of us feeling the same sense of primal urgency, another zing shot through me. This time, I wasn't the only one that felt it.

  Rafe grunted at the sensation, but didn't stop, not even for split second. Instead, we pressed closer, even as he struggled to single-handedly release the clasp on my own jeans. As his hand grazed over my sensitive, swollen core, it felt like a storm had charged the air around us.

  Before I could think anything of it, a large zapping sensation split between the two of us, pressing me back into the seat so hard I saw stars. I felt Rafe's weight lift off of me, the car shook.

  Then, everything went white.

  2 Ria

  When I opened my eyes, everything was still white, but that wasn't exactly right. It was like I was in the whiteness, like it had enveloped me. It was almost scarier than all-consuming darkness, the kind that you can almost reach out and touch with a bare hand.

  When I looked around into my bright surroundings, I was surprised that my head hit nothing. Wasn't I in the car? More specifically, the back seat? And hadn't Rafe been there too?

  Glancing around, I felt a surge of panic rising in my chest and strangling me. "Rafe?" I called out. Not even an echo answered me back. The silence that followed was worse than deafening, it was as if I was deaf.

  "Rafe!" I shouted louder, trying to make my voice carry further.

  No luck.

  As I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, I tried to concentrate hard what was going on and what had led up to this moment. What had happened? I remembered the rain, the car, the very steamy kissing and...

  "Yes, about that," a freakily, bizarrely familiar voice said from somewhere nearby.

  Snapping my eyes wide open and whirling around to face the source of the voice, I found myself completely floored. Of course, I had always imagined this moment, had always dreamed it, but I never in a million years would have actually thought that I would be coming face to face, nose to nose, boob to boob...

  With myself.

  Stunned into silence, all I could do was gape at the perfectly replicated image of myself as she stalked toward me. Her expression leaned toward being bored, but with a strange sense of rage, like a sneaky and violent riptide beneath the ocean’s surface. I hoped I looked that epically hot when I was pissed, otherwise, I was being ripped off. Alas, I was most likely just a medium hot or something. Like salsa. But the hot salsa, not the mild stuff.

  When my mirror image stopped before me, we were a mere two feet or so apart and the proximity was alarming. Had I always had a freckle there? I had to make a mental note to take a good, long look in the mirror when I got out of... Wherever the hell I was.

  It hit me then. "O-M-G," I whispered as my hand rose to my mouth of its own accord. "Am I in hell?"

  The look that the me standing across from me gave, well, me, was both incredulous and disgusted, like she - me? - couldn't believe that such stupidity existed on the planet. Or in hell, if that's where I was.

  "Well?" I demanded? Silent glares didn't answer questions. Unless the question was can I have the last breadstick?

  In that case, a silent glare is all that should be needed before limbs are removed.

  She-Me rolled her eyes at Me-Me and grumbled something that sounded more than a little insulting under her breath. "You're not in fucking hell, you dumbass slut," she sneered. "But that can absolutely be arranged."

  Well then. Fuck me in the nose and call me Pinocchio, that was really fucking rude, even coming from me. "You're a bitch," I pointed out. Literally. I pointed at her.

  "And you're a bimbo tromping along all over what is mine," she snapped, her face turning a disturbing shade of red.

  "Okay, so first of all: are you okay? That colour seriously can't be natural," I quipped. "Second: you are me, so that means they're mine by default. Not that they're actually mine, but you get the point. Now go get your own Sins." I was huffing by the time I finished my mini-rant, and the other, angrier me was less than amused.

  She jabbed a very well manicured nail into my chest and was breathing right into my face. Gross. "I have my own. They were mine first."

  I opened my mouth to say something about the impossibility of that, but she moved her finger from my chest to my lips.

  "And I have a pretty good idea of how to make sure they stay mine," she said with a grin that reminded me of those villains in the anime shows that Beck and Gray watched together all the time. Gat secretly loved them, but he would kick my ass if I outed him. Like, actually kick it. I'd learned my lesson.

  I rolled my eyes so far into the back of my head that I swore I could see my brain. "Riiiiiight," I drawled. I lifted my hand in a salute and made to turn away. "Good luck with all that, Inferior Ria."

  The resulting hiss was enough of a reaction for me, and I had to hide my snicker under the guise of brushing hair back from my face.

  "Alright, cocky bitch, you win," Inferior Ria growled, the sound making me wrinkle my nose in disgust. Remind me to never, ever do that.

  When I peeked over my shoulder, she was glaring at the ground, hand extended as though she wanted to shake on it. I knew from experience what those nails could do, and I wasn't willing to test my mortality here in Crazy Land.

  Shaking my head and crossing my arms over my chest, I said, "nope. I'm not that stupid." And the sneer returned. Go figure.

  Inferior Ria dropped her hand back to her side and balled it into a fist, her knuckles turning white. "So you're not," she replied coolly. "But that won't stop me."

  Raising one eyebrow and turning to face her once more, I wondered why my inner self was so completely nuts. Maybe it's because she was a reflection of myself. "Stop you from wha-"

  Before I even finished phrasing my question, she was on me - as in, actually on top of me. I fell to the ground under our combined weight and shoved my knee up into her fap folds.

  Take that, inner bitch. I thought as she curled in on herself.

  When I moved to get out from underneath her, she laid one hand firmly on my chest, fingers splayed.

  "Hey! Consent is not just a word, you cow!" I hissed as I tried to slap her hand away. She started violently shaking and I began wondering if maybe I broke her - or if I had broken myself.

  "Hey, look. I'm sorry, okay?" Well, that was a pitiful attempt at an apology. I seriously sucked at those. But I never meant to make myself cry because what kind of sicko wants that anyway?

  When she lifted her face to mine, her eyes were wild and dangerous, the insanity blatant.

  And she was laughing.

  "Checkmate, slut," she cackled.

  Before I could do anything more than blink and process her words, light like giant embers from a fire blazed around me, out from the palm of my inner self's hand and out of my chest. The pain was like nothing I had ever experienced.

  I was blinded, muted, deafened. Everything around me went still and not even the erratic pumping of my heart reached me through the agony. It tore through me, shredding every fibre of my flesh and soul, cutting deeper than the sharpest of blades.

  And when it died down, I felt as though I had, too.

  3 Rafe

  After the lights and black spots had cleared from my eyes, I sat up and glanced around in a daze. What had just fucking happened? One second, it was just Ria and me, the next, I was being thrown back and blinded.

  Trying to sit up, I found myself ass first in the passenger side floorboard, my legs propped up on the seat in front of me, and the glove box behind my head smashed into smithereens. I wasn't sure that was going to buff out.

  I glanced in the back, where Ria was slouched sideways in the back seat, unconscious. Panic rose in my throat and I felt like I couldn't breathe. Whatever had just happened threw me hard enough to knock me out for a few seconds, and I was immortal. That kind of force on a mortal...


  Scrambling, I pulled open the passenger side door and rolled out onto the damp grass. Rising quickly, I ran for the rear door and flung it open way harder than I should have.

  Pulling her out so she lay flat across the seat, I checked her pulse and found it still beating strong, but she was so pale that she could have been the first snowflake of winter and she was just as cold.

  In a panic, I carefully gathered her up in my arms and headed for the house, trying to be careful not to jostle her too much in case she was injured.

  I couldn’t lose her. There was no way that I could lose her. Not my precious little Omen, not like this.

  "Gray!" I boomed as I stormed through the already open front door. "Gray, help!"

  As with any time one of my brothers were called, five sets of footsteps instead of just one came thundering down the stairs. I had no time to acknowledge them as I used one arm to send everything on the table crashing to the ground, not giving a shit as dish after dish shattered on the tiled floor.

  "What the fuck happened?" Gatlin roared, shoving me out of the way just as I got Ria laid across the table.

  Wrath was hunched over her still form, putting his ear over her mouth to listen for breath, checking her pulse, and waving his hands all over her in a frantic frenzy. All of us knew that they had slept together, but I didn't think that any of us realised the extent of his feelings for her. Poor sucker was already really attached.

  Not that I was any better. From the moment I saw her, I knew she was mine, she would be mine. If I'd had to wait for centuries, for several lives and reincarnations to have her, I knew that I would make it so.

  Seeing her lying so still on the table made my heart clench as well as my fists. Whatever was trying to take her from me would pay. She was mine.

  I hadn't even realised that I was seeing red until I blinked a few times and noticed that Gray had somehow gotten Gat to calm down and move aside long enough for him to check her out.

  With most things, if there was a problem to be found and solved, Gray was the one to go to. The general assumption was that because he was Sloth, that equated to laziness, but that was as far from the truth as could be. Kind of. He never liked to put in much effort, so his mind and magic were always working in overdrive to find the easiest, simplest ways to get something done. You could give him a math problem and show him how it was supposed to be done and he would return it to you with something so simple that it would be laughable.

  So, at that moment, he was the one we needed. The one that Ria needed. His hands moved over her with a gentle hovering movement that I wouldn't have been able to do on its own, but he was also sending his Sin into her, searching for weaknesses and anything debilitating.

  When he moved his hands away slowly, regretfully, my panic surged again and gripped my heart in its ugly, grotesque claws while it squeezed. "What's up, doc?" I managed to choke out. My voice cracked, however, and I mentally berated myself. I was stronger than that, and I was stronger than my girl right there on the kitchen table, unmoving and terrifying.

  "I don't know what's wrong," Gray admitted, looking like he wanted to punch himself in the face. Gatlin's look of pure rage seemed to say that he volunteered.

  "Tell us what happened, Greed, right now," Gatlin growled, leaning across the table in a way that was threatening me while protecting Ria's still form.

  If I wasn't as freaked as he was, I would have probably cracked a joke at him, teased him about having a crush on the little mortal thing.

  As it was, I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. "Not that it's any of your business, but Ria and I were spending some quality time together before we got cockblocked by a giant flash of light strong enough that it knocked me out for a couple of seconds."

  All of the guys, except Eliam, gaped at me. E was always stoic and cool as a cucumber, even when he shouldn't have been. When he exploded two weeks before, it stunned the hell out of me. It had even convinced me that maybe he harboured some affection for Ria, but the following two weeks leading up to this moment, he had seemed to be doing everything in his power to disprove that hopeful theory.

  "Where did the light come from?" Beck asked after several long, agonising moments.

  I blinked at him several times before I could bring myself to answer. "If I knew where it came from, I wouldn't be standing here, now would I?" I snapped, not bothering to hide my announce.

  The looks that everyone shared said that they were mutually agreed on that front. They all knew I would be out kicking some white light ass if I had even an inkling. With the rest of them right on my heels, of course.

  "Okay then," Gray said, his voice steady and calm. I knew better though. He may have been better at hiding it, but he was facing the same devil inside his head that the rest of us were, the same rage and desperation. "We need to figure out how to wake her before anything else."

  I blanched. "What do you think we can do?" I snarled. "Do we just lean over and give her the kiss of life?"

  "Oh, like CPR? Couldn't hurt." Beck spoke up. "I'm always down to sneak as many kisses as I can from her."

  For a moment, we all glanced at each other and had the same thought. He'd snuck a kiss, or more, from her before? Or was that just his need for shock value stepping in, in place of his own upset?

  Irritated, I leaned past Gray and over Ria, gently pressing my lips to her terrifyingly cold ones. Gatlin growled a little, but the fucker didn't scare me. The only thing that scared me right then was the fact that nothing happened. No fluttering eyelashes or gasp of air. Nothing fantastical or magical.

  Straightening, I stepped back to allow someone else to give it a shot. Gatlin was the clear answer since he claimed her first. When he pressed his lips to hers and nothing happened, I could feel the despair wash over him, hidden behind his usual mask of anger. Everything about the Deadly Sin of Wrath came with a warning label that clearly said "DANGER" in bold, red letters, this was true. But we'd all been around each other long enough to know that behind his facade, he was aching and hurting.

  If Ria didn't wake up, there was a good chance that he would lose it.

  Wrath is the way it is because he gets attached so easily, but with so many reservations tucked away in his mind. It was sort of what mortal humans referred to as anxiety. He attached within moments but was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  We all knew that Ria couldn't be the shoe.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realised that the others had begun bantering back and forth. Their voices rose, but it was all muffled as I stared at the golden-haired goddess of a mortal woman lain flat across the table. The unnatural pale ivory of her skin was a stark contrast against the dark, solid wood. As I stared, her breathing became a little more rugged and I watched her chest rise heavily once, as though she had gasped.

  Maybe she could hear it, the frantic pounding of my heart against my ribcage. Maybe she could feel the paralytic fear rolling off me in waves. Maybe she could taste the panic and desperation filling the room at each rising octave. Maybe she'd come back okay and everything would be fine.

  I was startled back to the present as my brothers fell quiet and a lithe, shadowed figure stomped through the open doorway and into the foyer. The hairs on the back of my neck raised as I mentally readied myself for an attack. I felt like a feral beast.

  We all held our breath as the figure approached and I knew we were all on the same page. Until they came into the kitchen light, that is.

  Pushing back the hood of her raincoat, Clove turned an evil stink eye on every single one of us, and I couldn't help but look down. Feral beast I may not actually be, but my spirit recognised power, and Clove was powerful. I still didn't know what she was, and it was driving me insane.

  "Move out of the way, scoot scoot!" Clove ordered, moving her hands in a shooing motion that made even Eliam look like a petulant child.

  Approaching Ria's side, Clove ran her hands over her a few times, much the way Gray had done. She made a few noise
s of annoyance and disapproval, clucking her tongue and shaking her head as if Ria had done this to be stubborn.

  "Hard-headed little thing," she muttered, nearly echoing my thoughts. "Come on out, then. The real world is right here, Little Star."

  The older woman continued talking quietly to Ria, as though they were carrying on an entirely one-sided conversation, her voice seemed to be attempting to coax Ria out. But out of what? From all my experience in the world, and the most recent to boot, I was aware that comas were a thing that mortals suffered as a result of great injury, but Gray found none. He would have said something if she was in a coma, right?

  If I have to listen to her call Ria Little Star one more fucking time, I'm going to kick her wrinkly ass. I projected the thought to my brothers. While Beck, Gatlin, and Kellan seemed to agree, Eliam and Gray didn't seem so inclined, opting instead to roll their eyes at me and then glance at each other like I was the infuriating one.

  "I heard that, Rafe dear," Clove said without glancing up from her conversation with an unconscious woman. "And, for the record, my ass is wonderfully perky. I even have a tattoo there that I could flash you, since you're so interested in how it looks. And I know how you love your tattoos." If she had been facing me, I was sure she would have winked. Crazy old bat.

  If embarrassment was something that I recalled being capable of feeling, it's what I would have been feeling at that moment. As it was, I cleared my throat and shook my head before realising she still wasn't looking at me.

  "Um, no thank you, Miss Clove," I replied sheepishly. "Sorry about that."

  It wasn't the first time that Clove had intruded on our link, so it wasn't much of a surprise. We had no idea how she did it, but she did. She also knew what we were from the second that she'd met us. It was almost like she couldn't help it, like she was naturally attuned to anything that was cosmic, earthly, or spiritual.

  I was so busy in my own contemplative thoughts, that I didn't have the right mind to react quickly enough when Clove's hand snapped hard across Ria's cheek and our girl bolted upright into a sitting position, just narrowly avoiding bashing her head against that of the crazy lady that had assaulted her to begin with.