by Debra Dunbar
“You can easily find out her real name and address with your hacker skills, and I’ll just pop out to Cleveland or wherever and kill her. That way she won’t beat you anymore at your game. I’ll let you choose whether I Own her or not, and how slowly and painfully you want her to die. I’ll bring home a trophy for you to display so everyone will see how much I care for you.” I looked around his place. “A garland with her teeth maybe, or her scalp if she has nice hair.”
Wyatt made a kind of gurgling sound. “Sam. You’re joking aren’t you? In that weird way you do sometimes? You can’t just kill her. I want to beat her at the game, not physically harm her person. I’ll work on my technique and I’ll win eventually.”
Why would he want to do that? This idea was growing on me. What boyfriend wouldn’t want a garland of teeth?
“But this is much more effective,” I explained. “I don’t want you losing games and being humiliated by these other humans.”
“It’s okay if I lose. I’ll learn more that way, and eventually I’ll be good enough to beat her myself. I won’t get better if you just kill everyone who opposes me. Plus I won’t have any fun.” His voice was becoming stern. He clearly didn’t understand the situation and what I was proposing.
“Everyone will wonder how I can allow my human to suffer such humiliation,” I explained patiently. “Wyatt, you’re my most favored human. I can’t allow other humans to think they are above you. Plus, this is the sort of thing we do to show affection. I kill your enemy and bring you a trophy to display, and then everyone will know that you share a special bond with me.”
“I’m not wearing a garland of human teeth as a sign of your affection.” Wyatt was starting to sound pissed off. “If you do care about me, you’ll humor me and let me handle this in my own way. The way humans do.”
He had an overly optimistic idea of how humans handle things. “Ted Bundy didn’t do things this way. He would have been on board with this. He wouldn’t have insisted I stand idly by like some Low and watch my human get shown up and humiliated.”
“I’m not Ted Bundy. Normal humans don’t resolve conflict that way. This is a game. It’s supposed to be challenging and difficult. It won’t be if you just take out all my competition. I don’t get this side of you. You don’t massacre everyone who beats you at the dressage tests.”
“Those things don’t matter to me. This game matters to you. I can tell it reflects your status among the humans you respect; it provides you with a sense of where you stand in their hierarchy. I want to make it clear that you are favored, under the protection of a higher life form and that they should acknowledge your level.” Besides, I could hardly slaughter a field full of eight year old girls in their dressage outfits and possibly hope to get away with it.
“No Sam. You are not to interfere with my work. You will not kill my opponents. I know you don’t understand it, I know it goes against how you handle things back home, but you need to restrain yourself in these things.”
Whatever. I would indulge him. Everyone would think I’d gone soft allowing a human to demand this of me. I was hardly a demon anymore, doting over someone so much weaker than me in this fashion. I was soft on Wyatt though. I would suffer so much if he weren’t with me. I’d try to play by his rules to keep him happy. But if that woman in Cleveland got too far out of line, she was going to meet with an unfortunate accident.
Chapter 7
I was in a tank top and flannel PJs early Sunday, listening to light jazz, and getting my morning coffee. Wyatt had managed to get past his anger over my offer to kill his gaming opponent, and we’d eaten crab cakes, drank beer, and had sex for the rest of the evening. I felt all warm and happy. I was contemplating going to the gym after my coffee, to work off all the crab cakes and beer, when the doorbell rang.
There was an angel at my door.
My heart leapt. He was here. I had missed him. I envisioned showing him what I could do with the water globes and him showing me other amazing things. One look at his face and I realized he was not equally happy to see me. My joy vanished and fear replaced it. I’d pushed him too far with my crazy displays of energy and my sexual taunting, masturbating with the tattoo. This was it. I was dead. He had finally come to finish me off and he’d had the courtesy to ring my doorbell first.
“Show me your arm, cockroach” Gregory snarled.
Anger replaced the fear. How dare he show up out of the blue, after eight weeks of nothing, and demand to see the stupid, botched-up brand he’d put on my arm. Arrogant asshole. I’d be damned if I let him order me around like this.
“No fucking way,” I told him and tried to shut the door in his face. He’s six and a half feet tall and built like a wrestler on steroids. He put an arm in the doorway and it just bounced back off him to slam open into the wall. As he strode in, I made a mad dash for the kitchen, vaulting over the counter top that divided it from the great room. Maybe I wouldn’t need to go to the gym after all.
He walked purposely across the room and stood a few feet away from the counter, watching me like a cat stalking a mouse. “Come here, cockroach” he ordered. “I’m going to fix that cursed thing or kill you. I haven’t decided which option appeals the most to me right now. Either way, you’ve tortured me with it for the last time.”
Yeah, like that was really going to make me comply. Did he seriously think I was going to actually come to him?
Instead I grabbed some knives and various kitchen utensils and threw them at him. He easily snatched the knives out of the air and plunged them into the fabric cushions of my bar stools. The spatulas and spoons he just batted away. I could have thrown a far more lethal burst of raw energy or lightning at him, but I didn’t want to damage my house.
Every knife I owned was stuck in my upholstery at this point, and I was looking quickly around for pots and pans to throw next when I saw him lunge at me over the counter. I ducked down so he would go over me, and scrambled around the island. He sailed right into the cabinetry with all the force of his weight, cracking one of the doors in half.
“Damnit, you broke my cabinet!” I shouted. “They’re solid hickory, a custom design. It took me months to get them special ordered. Try not to destroy my house, you asshole!”
He looked at me with interest and then put his fist through another of my cabinet doors. “Come here,” he commanded. “Or I will break every last one of them into splinters.”
Fucking jerk. I ran for the open door and sensed him throwing a burst of white as he raced to beat me there. I changed course and put the huge sectional sofa between us, surprised to see how bad his aim was. That white stuff didn’t come anywhere near me, and was barely strong enough to singe the door.
Gregory glanced over at me and carefully closed the big steel door, locking it, and setting the deadbolt and the chain. There was no way I could get all that crap undone and out the door before he caught me. Keeping his eyes on me, he walked through the great room to the huge glass French door sets at the rear of the house that opened up to the pool and gardens. He thoroughly locked and bolted each one. I kept the sofa between us at all times.
The angel walked over to the edge of the sofa and faced me. “Come here,” he said again, this time in that soft, deep, persuasive rumble. It rolled over me in dark blue, like velvet and thunder, and I really wanted to do what that voice said.
“Come here willingly, little cockroach. Come to me and I won’t hurt you. Your obedience is all I ask.”
I can’t begin to describe the feeling that blue put out into the room, into me. It was rich and sweet, and pulled at me deep inside. I wanted to walk over to him, to drown myself in those black eyes, to be as physically close to him as possible. If I did what he said, he’d be so pleased with me. Pleasing him, obeying him, would bring me such satisfaction and joy.
Instead I shook my head to clear the fog of blue from it, then picked up a decorative wooden candle stick and waved it at him menacingly. It wouldn’t do any good in a fight against an angel, but
I felt like I had to make a statement of my free will. I had to stand firm against the blue shit and its siren song.
He dashed around the sofa at me, and I ran trying to keep as much of the sofa between us as possible as I threw the candlestick at him. We did a few laps, then reversed as he tried to catch me off guard. I should have been scared that a being far more powerful than me basically had me trapped in my own home. I should have still been angry at his arrogance and attempted compulsion, but I was actually starting to have fun being chased around the house like this.
We continued the sofa laps for a while, when he suddenly leapt on the sofa and launched himself over it at me, knocking the huge heavy sectional over backwards. I was taken by surprise and shrieked as he hit me like a linebacker, knocking the breath out of my lungs. He wrapped his arms around me and twisted as we hit the ground, taking the full impact as we landed and slid across the floor, crashing into the dining room table and sending it flying. As soon as we stopped, he flipped over on top of me, pinning me to the ground. I wasn’t even bruised.
I felt him take a deep breath and he looked down at me, the black bleeding through his irises to engulf his eyes entirely in their color. “Can I please see your arm?” He was obviously finding the polite word difficult to say. “I think I can fix the brand, if you’ll let me try?”
I looked up at him. There was no blue stuff this time. No compulsion, no arrogant ordering me around. He actually said please. Still, I really didn’t want to do this.
“I’m sorry.” He sounded sincere. “I’m under a lot of stress right now, and having you constantly messing with me through the brand hasn’t done much for my temper. I need to disable it. It’s driving me insane, and I’m less liable to kill you if I fix it.”
“Fix it? What exactly is your idea of fixing it? Making me into a mindless slave?” I asked in suspicion.
He laughed cynically. “Tempting, but I’m afraid that’s way beyond even my power. I can stop it from being an erogenous zone. Anything in addition to that would be a miracle.”
It would be nice not to have an orgasm every time someone grabbed my arm. It was funny at first, but now it was just annoying. Either way, this whole thing was going to be a lesson in humiliation. If I said no, he’d just force me. At least he was asking politely now, as if I had an option to refuse Reluctantly, I raised my right arm over my head to expose the tattoo of the sword with the angel wing guards and the red, raised circle of flesh around it.
He took another deep breath, and his teeth became pointed spikes. Piranha teeth. “This isn’t going to be easy.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or me.
I couldn’t watch him when he originally put the marks on my arm since he had my head turned to face the other way and held firmly with his hand. I was determined to watch this time. I wondered if he’d bite me again. Last time it had been like a thousand hot needles in my skin. That may not sound erotic to humans, but for me it had been an incredible sensation.
Instead of his teeth, though, he took his tongue and laved the raised hickey mark with the middle part of it. I thought I was going to melt. Sensation poured through me and I arched myself against him. He ran his tongue slowly three times counter clockwise around the mark, and I thrashed against him, trying to grind my hips on his. I doubted he had a cock, or anything else down there, but I sure as hell wanted to find out.
“Try to hold still,” he said thickly. He was somehow remaining enviously calm and collected while I was a mess of need.
“Can’t” was all I could manage. Can’t think. Certainly can’t speak.
He pressed himself against me more firmly, trying to hold me immobile. It only intensified the waves of orgasm crashing through me. Three sets of this torture ensued before he finally pulled his tongue away. I hoped he was done as I was at the point of insanity from all the sensation. Aftershocks were still rocking me, but the worst had to be over.
Nope. No such luck. He took the tip of his tongue and ran it around the outer edge of the hickey mark, spiraling inward at an agonizingly slow pace. I realized it wasn’t his teeth that had the hot needle sensation, but the tip of his tongue. It was like jolts of pain and pleasure as the sparks spread from my skin down through the network of his red purple deep inside me. I thought of all the things I’d love him to do with that tongue, all the parts of my body I’d like him to trace with it.
“Ohhhhhhhh,” I dragged out, unable to formulate a coherent thought at this point. I wasn’t rubbing all over him anymore, but before I could be grateful for small gifts, I felt the pull of my personal energy rushing to the surface.
This was really embarrassing. My kind has wild, crazy, violent sex, but the only time we allow our spirit-selves, our personal energy, to mingle is during breeding. Before you get anywhere close to an exchange there are petitions, negotiations, contracts. To have my personal energy flying to the surface, eager to leave this flesh and join with his without my thoughtful and written consent, was a grave loss of control. And at this point, I really didn’t care. As I’ve said before, pride is not my sin.
I held my energy on the outline of my flesh, in an invitation, fully expecting nothing in return. So I was surprised when I felt the angel’s red purple energy leap up to touch the edge of mine against my skin. For the first time ever, I realized my energy had hue, orange with patches of royal blue. It swirled around and through his in an obscene splash of color, dissolving to a sharp, translucent white where it merged. Slowly, our spirit selves blended bit by bit, turning a clear, slightly opalescent white and sending a vibration of sound deep within me. I felt more and more of our energy merge into whiteness and shuddered with the intensity of it. The process gained in speed as we rushed and swirled toward each other. Finally, there was a click of resolution and we existed as one, a translucent white, suspended between our bodies. We held there for what seemed an eternity, and then slowly bled back into our individual colors and our physical forms. Awareness returned to me and I realized that somehow we had shifted positions and I lay on top of Gregory like an overcooked noodle.
“Are you okay?” he asked after a few moments. He sounded like he was struggling to speak. Or maybe I just couldn’t hear very well yet.
I was more than okay. This was the most amazing thing ever. Life altering. World shattering. Amazing. I’d never done anything like that before, hadn’t realized anything like that was even possible. I was afraid to move and break the spell.
“No bones,” I slurred. “Bones are gone. Can’t move.”
That seemed to alarm him, and he forced himself to move so he could grip my arms and chest. “I feel bones. You seem to have them. What’s wrong with them? Why won’t they work?”
“Metaphor.” My speech was still a bit garbled. “That was epic. Can we do it again? But not now. I can’t do it again right now. I need a nap first. And a roast beef sandwich. A nap and a sandwich.”
“No, we can’t do it again.” Gregory’s voice was stern. “We can never do it again.”
I wanted to reply, but all I could do was lay there on him and try to regain some control over my physical form. What the fuck had we done? It was a perfect rush of sensation that had nothing to do with organic matter. Like a moment of existence without the flesh, but without death, held together and joined with another.
I moved a bit, beginning to regain feeling in my limbs again.
“Is the brand still so sensitive?” Gregory asked. “Did I fix it at all?”
“No way I’m going to touch it right now. Give me a few moments to come back to earth, and I’ll see how it goes.” I rolled off him and shakily got to my feet. I had to put a hand on the tipped over sofa to steady myself.
The angel propped himself up on his elbows and looked around at the wreckage. He looked incredibly human at the moment with his hair mussed and his skin a more flesh-like texture. His teeth were no longer pointy, and the black that filled his eyes was slowly receding into his irises again. He was beautiful. Like this, or with the pointy
teeth and black filled eyes, he was beautiful. I caught my breath as I felt my personal energy stir again and a warmth run through me. So much for the nap and roast beef sandwich. I was ready to go for round two.
Gregory got up and righted the huge sectional sofa with one hand, pushing it easily back into its original spot. With that done, he walked over and began plucking knives out of my barstool cushions, placing them in the sink. I followed and began picking up spoons and spatulas from around the room.
“I’m sorry about these ripped cushions, and your cabinets, too.” He glanced at the one he’d put his fist through.
“No you’re not.” I laughed. “Admit it; you enjoyed tearing up my house.”
Imagine my surprise when he smiled. Smiled. All the way. Even his eyes smiled. It was devastating. He could rule the universe with that smile. He certainly could rule me with that smile. If he did that more often, he would be unstoppable.
“Okay. It was especially fun putting my fist in that cabinet there. You should have seen your face, little cockroach.” The smile got bigger. I was a goner. I needed to change the subject right now before I threw myself at him like a concert groupie.
“I’ve wanted to show you this. Watch.” I walked around the counter and turned on the sink faucet, then gathered together a globe of water.
“Very nice, little cockroach,” Gregory said as I held the globe above the sink. “Can you freeze it? Vaporize it?”
“Not yet,” I admitted.
He came over behind me and put his hands on top of mine. My concentration slipped with his touch and the globe wept drops into the sink basin.
“Try separating it and pulling it back together.” His breath stirred the hair by my ear.
I felt him slide his power down through me, and the globe became a dozen smaller ones, hovering in a neat line above the counter. Suddenly I knew how to do it. It was as if he’d transferred the skill and the knowledge along with the stream of power. I got the feeling this was something he didn’t do for just anyone. A gift. The thought made me uneasy.