Thief

by Greg Curtis

  “I live. I strive. I win.” The words had more than a hint of desperation in them now.

  The sweat poured off his brow as he struggled to keep them closed against the onslaught of his desires. With a supreme effort he managed to turn back around, questions finally beginning to pepper him. Didn’t she know he was here? She must, surely. She was an angel. She knew everything else. Then why was she doing this? Was she testing him? Tempting him? Seeing if he had the discipline to carry out the job? The strength? The self-control?

  “I live. I strive. I win.”

  Or was she teasing him? The question nagged at him endlessly, teasing him, even though he knew there could be nothing between them. Never could be. Sherial would never tease. It was a human thing. But the thought would not leave him.

  Over and over he reminded himself that she was an angel. She belonged in heaven with other angels. He kept trying to remember the way she had been with the others of her people, as she was meant to be. He was a human: imperfect, clumsy, and ugly. He lied, stole, cheated, swindled. Sure he could always tell himself it was for a good cause. That he did it only to help the poor. That he harmed only the evil. That he never killed or hurt anyone. But it was wrong. For a human, for him it might be relatively right, but for an angel it was totally wrong. For an angel there were no shades of grey.

  “I am a thief.”

  The new mantra suddenly occurred to him, and its utterance suddenly gave him greater self-control than before. Much greater. He repeated those four words silently to himself, over and over again, holding them to him like a shield, - a shield and a sense of identity. And as the laughter and the splashing continued they protected him, as his rage once had. He was a thief, a taker of things that weren’t his, a criminal. A thief, someone completely unworthy of an angel. Unworthy of Sherial.

  The words hurt, but they were true, and they could hold him. All his glorious dreams of charity and justice, they were window dressing. At his heart he was a thief, no matter how he wrapped it up in high ideals. It hurt, it belittled him, it made him feel lower than an earthworm, but it was true. And that reality, that identity, could protect him where nothing else could. The price was worth it.

  He used the mantra, with everything he had, welcoming the self control that returned to him. Finally he had found something that could hold her at bay, and his relief was immense. As was his disappointment. He concentrated ever more strongly on them, knowing they were his salvation.

  Eventually the words even allowed him the luxury of moving away. First with his thoughts, then finally his feet. A shambling gait that carried him unsteadily back towards their camp, in truth his camp for she surely had no need of one. One foot in front of the other he placed each like a piece in a jigsaw, painstakingly and slowly, with infinite caution. It was a struggle just to move away from her, he didn’t have enough mind left for co-ordination as well.

  “I am a thief.” It was working and his relief knew no bounds. Once again he was pulling himself back from the brink of self-destruction, though each time it was getting harder and harder. This time he had found a new strength, yet still he had barely survived. How would he cope next time? He resolved once more to raise it with her. To beg her to bathe elsewhere, to turn down her charms. Yet even as he made the resolve, he knew he’d cave in to his embarrassment and shame as he had so often before. He’d say nothing for fear of driving her away, and for the terror of seeing her rejection. Being a man was sometimes hell.

  Then disaster struck.

  He turned a corner and without a moment’s warning found himself back at the brook where she bathed. His treacherous feet knowing the path back to the camp perfectly, had somehow instead carried him in a circle.

  But he didn’t have time to curse them, to scream his fear, or even to break down and cry, for she was there before him in all her radiance. Naked and glowing, physical perfection, love and beauty, taking his breath away, his mind, his very soul.

  He was lost.

  Mikel gazed upon her, wonder and lust consuming him as nothing else ever had, ever could. Some sights no man, no mere mortal is ever meant to see, and he knew absolute terror. But that could not compare with his desire. For Sherial was divine, a concept he had never truly grasped until that moment. She was both an angel of God and truest essence of woman combined. Perhaps they were the same thing.

  Her wings, glorious beyond anything he’d ever known or even imagined, were fully extended, lifted right out of the water so that she didn’t get them wet while she bathed. They surrounded her, framed her, suffused her like a magnificent rainbow of white. They radiated such splendour they could only have been of God. And yet even in all their magnificence, their greatest wonder was in exposing Sherial’s naked perfection to the world, to him. She was radiant in every sense of the word. Light from above her reflected all around, bathing her in her customary golden halo. Reflected in the water even her image was too pure for description.

  Hunger storms raged through him as he saw her, drank in everything about her. Her breasts, her curves, her womanhood, so utterly as God had intended that nothing could ever compare. For the first time he saw the way her wings joined, golden flesh and white feathers merging smoothly, seamlessly along her entire back, and wondered only - why didn’t everyone’s? She was soft and yielding while also athletic and strong, so perfectly proportioned that no sculpture could ever have done justice to her. She was beauty beyond the imagination of man.

  As always she had an audience. Ringed completely around the small pond, as lost as him were the animals that had accompanied them ever since they had first travelled this road. Every one of them adoring her, completely helpless in her spell. As he knew finally, was he. But they didn’t ache for her in the same terrible manner as him.

  Nobody ached like that.

  In a final instant of clarity he realized there was a reason angels all wore the white robes. It was for protection. Not their own, but to protect those poor humans unfortunate enough to see them. For he was lost and there was no possible return.

  Mikel fell to his knees and cried out his pain and fear and longing, a primal sound of raw emotion that simply gushed out of him, but his eyes never left her, never blinked. They couldn’t. Her visage seared into him, his brain, his soul, and he knew he would never be able to remove it. He would never be able to want to. He would never see anything else again.

  Startled and anxious, Sherial’s eyes found him immediately, the heat of them unlike anything he had ever known. They bored into him like a thousand searchlights, turning night into day, shining light in even the darkest recesses, seeking out what brought him pain. Sherial was scared for him, seeing him caught like a rabbit in a trap, and she sought desperately to know what held him. And in doing so she brought back to life every fear he had ever known of her.

  Sherial knew him in that moment as no one else ever could. He had no secrets, no privacy from her, nowhere even to run too, and he knew that very invasion was everything he could ever hope for. It was only right. Sherial’s stare terrified him, and yet he worshipped her for it. He worshipped her.

  Sherial was surprised by him. Somehow he felt her start as he caught her off guard, and briefly wondered how she could possibly not have known. Surely he had been shouting out his craving with every ounce of energy he possessed. But he had surprised her he gathered, though not with his presence. Sherial had always known he was nearby, that he might see her bathing. She would have been perfectly happy had he been on the bank with the others. It had not occurred to her that there might be anything unusual let alone improper in that. She didn’t know what impropriety was. The animals watched her bath all the time, why shouldn’t he?

  Instead he had surprised her with his thoughts. Physical desire? She had not even considered the concept as she spotted his presence nearby. It had never occurred to her that he might think her so desirable. The animals didn’t, other angels didn’t, why should he?

  She laughed again as she saw in his mind his belief that
she must be married. That she could not possibly be alone, and in dazed disbelief he understood that she was. That she had never needed nor been needed by another in that way. It had not occurred to her that she should be anything other than what she was, an angel carrying out the service of her Lord. Impossible as it was for him to understand, no one else had felt for her as he did.

  Yet it wasn’t an unpleasant shock. Instead it was for her a slowly dawning joy, a bolt out of the blue but unbelievably a pleasant one. Somewhere in her soul she liked the thought of being desirable. Even more, she liked the idea of Mikel desiring her. To her it seemed only right and proper.

  It was also something, he gradually discovered with her, she’d almost been waiting for, in the very back of her mind. Since the first it had been lingering in her deepest thoughts, an idle speculation and stray fancy of idle moments, but never really surfacing to become more. It was almost as if she’d been waiting for something to happen but never quite knowing what it would be or when.

  Sherial liked him. That slowly dawning wonder echoed around and around in his mind like a thousand church bells tolling. The relief was overwhelming for the fear of being rejected by her had been beyond his ability to handle, and yet it was as nothing compared to the discovery that Sherial liked him. There was surely nothing else in the entire universe that could be as wonderful as that. Or as terrifying.

  Wonder filled him. Wonder, astonishment, hope and desire. Sherial wasn’t rejecting him. Sherial liked him. A million volts of joy arced through him as he gloried in her acceptance of him. Sherial took pleasure in knowing him. She enjoyed his better qualities, was impressed by his talents and determination and loved his sense of humour and compassion.

  But it went beyond liking he gradually learned. As her thoughts and feelings ran through him, he discovered that simple truth, as perhaps did Sherial. It was more than friendship and it was more intimate than the love she held for all creatures. It was almost, - he couldn’t bear to bring himself to utter the concept even to himself, and yet it rapidly grew in him that it was so.

  Sherial not only liked him he slowly dared to accept as a glorious shock after shock overtook him, she enjoyed him as a man. She welcomed his carnal thoughts. They were for her both a compliment and a pleasure. They were also in some way appropriate, as though he was only doing what was natural and proper in the world. He was only feeling what he was meant to feel. He wanted to tell her that he was a man, that this was only the normal lust associated with being male, but the words simply refused to be uttered. Against the certainty of her heart all his words were as nothing.

  His thoughts were to Sherial a novelty, a revelation, something she’d never experienced, and never really thought about, but also something she liked, that she wanted to enjoy some more, as was only right, she told him. In her heart she more than gave him leave to feel as he did, she expected him to.

  While Sherial was pure and innocent in every way, in no way could she ever be called a prude, he quickly discovered. She knew everything that occurred between a man and woman and thought them all grand. For far from sin or immorality she regarded sex as one of the Lord’s blessings. A fine gift for his children to be savoured and thanks given. It was a chance for two people to know the joy of love and through it the love of family and the love of God. Even then, with nothing decided and nothing done, Sherial was giving thanks for what both of them were feeling.

  Both of them were feeling desire.

  Sherial took pleasure in his desire and returned it unashamedly. It stunned him as nothing else could, though he didn’t stop enjoying it for even a second. Sherial experienced everything that he did, knew all that he ached for, and amazingly she enjoyed the idea. It tickled her fancy. It made her curious.

  In some ways Sherial was a child in a candy store for the first time, thrilled by her first taste. She wanted more. Yet in other ways she was all angel. She loved him in a way more intimate than any she had ever known, as he did her. Obviously it was intended that it be so. There could be no other explanation. It was therefore only right that they should experience desire. It was only the Lord’s will.

  It was a revelation to him, the dawn of a glorious new day. Sherial liked him. He ached to run to her. He wanted to sing and dance his joy. He needed to run away screaming. He hoped to die.

  His fears weren’t allowed. Sherial didn’t even understand his fear. She told him that immediately. What he was dreaming of, what she too was now imagining, had absolutely nothing to do with fear. It was the most wonderful gift a man and a woman could share. How could there possibly be anything to fear from something so wonderful? Besides, she believed it had already been decided by the highest power that this should be. The only reason he felt this way towards her was that he was meant to. That too was why she felt the same. End of story.

  Therefore she wouldn’t allow his fears. On the most fundamental level Sherial somehow took the decision out of his hands, and he knew with wonder, there was no decision to make. Not by him anyway.

  Knowing his desires, as he understood hers, Sherial began to celebrate them with him. He had come this far, and now she didn’t want him to turn back. Not yet anyway, maybe never. She wanted to enjoy some more, a lot more, and so did he. Sherial knew what would work. Sherial knew everything Mikel knew, and Mikel knew exactly what he wanted to see. Therefore so did Sherial.

  It began with a smile. A smile that said hello and welcome in a way that would bring a grown man to his knees and then make him crawl over broken glass towards her. A smile of innocence and hunger, love and lust, of infinite wonder. Not a single word had been spoken and yet in that smile she told him everything of her desire.

  Unbearably slowly and deliberately Sherial reacted to his lusts, turning to face him so that he could see all of her, as he had begged her too in his thoughts, and so that she in turn could enjoy his physical response. She wasn’t disappointed, for as he gazed upon her beauty hunger took him. Fire raged through his loins, a heat no water could quench. He wasn’t alone.

  And then she came towards him, the water flowing gracefully around her hips, and then, as it became more shallow, her thighs. She wanted him to see everything, to know she was woman as well as angel. To know and to love her both as woman and angel. Yet even her overpowering sensuality could not fire him as much as the knowledge that Sherial wanted him as a man. As her man. That was a pleasure beyond understanding.

  Sherial started smiling like the Cheshire cat as she felt him responding. It was a wondrous circle. As Sherial tantalized and tempted him more, so his passions raged higher and higher, in turn fuelling her own wants and needs, and causing her to tempt him further. In short order both of them ached for much more.

  And they both knew it.

  The possibility of where this could end, should end swept Mikel up in it like a hurricane, breaking down the last of his defences like tissue paper. Unashamed, he begged for her love, and knew she heard him, - Sherial felt the hunger too. His hunger was also hers. Hers was his. Between the two of them there was little room for anything else. Sherial like Mikel was tempted, caught in her own web of seduction, and she was wavering.

  For Sherial he was shown it was only partly a sexual thing, and mostly something far more. Something so much more that it frightened him even as he longed for it with his every single atom. As did she.

  No, he finally accepted, Sherial wasn’t wavering at all. She was certain, and had been from the first moment he had come to her. Sherial too wanted to consummate their relationship every bit as much as him, though Mikel knew that it wasn’t simply wanting on her part. On some level Sherial believed that it had always been intended for them to come together. It was simply that she hadn’t realized it until he had come to her. In that single moment she had known absolutely. Sex was simply a part of that coming together, and she wanted that closeness, all of it. More, she was determined to have it. Sooner or later Sherial promised him, she was going to have him, forever. It was not an idle promise.

 
; What was holding her back was not shyness or propriety. Nor was it fear or doubt. Sherial knew nothing of any of those things. It wasn’t lack of desire for she had at least as much as he himself. It wasn’t even a need for commitment or anything so prosaic, - so human. Sherial already knew that whether or not they did this thing now, Mikel and her were committed for life. And Mikel knew the terrible fear and wondrous joy that she was right. Certainly he could never leave her.

  The only thing holding her back was that Sherial was worried, - for him.

  Sherial told him that he wasn’t ready, but that in time he might be. She told him that she would be there with him until then, and that she would not leave him. That it would be just as hard for her as it was for him. She meant it. Sherial always spoke the truth and besides he felt her desire and concern. She like him, was torn.

  In truth he finally accepted that the only thing that had ever been holding her back was her fear that she might harm him. That he wasn’t strong enough. That their passion might hurt, might even kill him. It was something he couldn’t bear to listen to. Not now that he knew she would gladly let him revel in everything he ached for. That she would celebrate with him.