As he sucked hard on her nipples, one hand then flat to the small of her back to help her balance, she arched her back against it, rested her hands behind her on his strong thighs as she stroked her sex gently back and forth against his length, knowing she couldn’t take it much longer before having him back inside her.
‘Would it be so bad?’ he asked, tracing his kisses up her neck as he still clasped her breast, his voice low and raspy against her ear. ‘Being owned by me? Doing this every night? Every day? Whenever the mood took us?’
‘Or what if I owned you?’ she asked, lowering her head to look him in the eyes. ‘What if I chose to keep you down here? What if I took you whenever the mood took me?’
‘Are you daring to threaten me again, Jessie?’
She smiled against his. ‘I’ve seen that soft inside, Eden. Don’t try and play the hard guy now.’
He took a sharp intake of air through his teeth. ‘There you go again, thinking you’ve got me all worked out.’
‘Then surprise me.’
He grasped hold of her behind, lifting her so he could guide himself into her sex.
Hand tightening on her neck, he pressed his mouth to her ear. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ he whispered.
And he thrust.
Jessie coiled into his shoulder with a shallow intake of breath, one hand slamming onto his chest, the other clutching the back of the sofa.
When she could force herself upright, she stared into his eyes – deep, dark eyes; eyes she had thought she understood. And she searched them as he pressed his body up against hers to give himself more control as he began his slow, purposeful, albeit brusque, penetration.
She locked her hand on the back of his neck, his eyes unsettling in their sincerity, a surge of panic and thrill washing through her. She panted open-mouthed at the firmness of his grip, the force of his thrusts as if he wasn’t letting her go even if she wanted him to. The compulsion to instead sink deeper into him, onto him, was all-consuming.
Just as she started to relax into it, she felt it.
She wasn’t tingling with arousal. The warmth coursing through her wasn’t just from the intimacy. She widened her eyes in panic, her arms tensing either side of Eden as she lowered her head.
It couldn’t happen then. There was no way it could happen then. But the spark at the pit of her spine was undeniable, the heat rising up every vertebra, the tingle of static in the air around her.
‘Jess?’
She clenched her jaw, trying to fight it, but the burning sensation engulfed her back.
She was going to hurt him, if she didn’t get him away from him soon, the static alone could kill him.
He caught hold of her arms, urging her to look at him. ‘Jess? What’s wrong?’
She yanked herself from his grasp. ‘Eden, get away from me,’ she hissed quietly, turning her back on him and crawling away.
She kept her back to him, fell onto her haunches, her forehead to the floor, her hands balled into fists as the heat continued to spread along her back. She slammed her palm down onto concrete, sending fractures through the ground beneath her.
It couldn’t happen then.
It couldn’t.
Eden tugged up his shorts and jeans and stood. He couldn’t tell if she was in pain or in shock. If he’d hurt her somehow.
As her hand slammed against concrete, he flinched as he saw the floor crack.
But as he took a step forward to check on her, the light nearly blinded him.
He recoiled, the backs of his legs hitting the edge of the sofa, causing him to topple back onto it. He snapped his head to the left, shielded his eyes.
When he looked back the brief flash of light had eased. What was left of it spanned outwards from her spine like sparklers making patterns in the night sky – iridescent sparklers that were violet one minute, then silver, then gold, charged by the air around her.
Sparks never retained one form, the twelve-foot-long outline constantly fluctuating.
But he could still identify the shape they drew in the darkness. He could see exactly what spanned out of Jessie’s back.
What ignited the dark room in front of him was the static spark of wings.
28
‘You’re an angel?’
His words may have been whispered, but he could have screamed them for all she was able to focus on him right then. She clenched her hand against her forehead to ease her pounding headache as the images hit her hard and fast – so many images, like a displaced puzzle, rapidly forming into some kind of semblance of order, engraving itself in her memory like they had already happened.
Faster and faster the images came, the screams, the voices, flashes of light, dark landscapes, blood, so much blood, fire, the wounded – her skull feeling as though it was going to splinter if she didn’t get them out soon.
‘Jess?’ he said again as she eased back on her haunches, her back straightening again. ‘Jess, can you hear me?’
She struggled unsteadily to her feet, tugged her dress sleeves back up over her shoulder as she felt the sparks die down, no doubt still singeing the back of her dress as she wrapped it around her chest to cover her modesty. Spine tingling and aching, her fist locked to her forehead in a futile attempt to keep the flashing lights at bay, she looked at Eden’s blurred, swaying figure through squinted eyes. ‘You need to go,’ she said, it hurting to even tilt her head.
‘I don’t need to go anywhere.’
‘I’m telling you to go.’
‘What the fuck just happened – did I do something to evoke it?’
‘Eden, I’m not in the mood for wild stabs in the dark. And I’m not in the mood to talk about this. Please, just go.’
She winced as the blood rushed to her head with every movement, sending shooting pains down the back of her neck and shoulder. She exhaled with impatience and marched over to the hidden door.
She was in too much pain to argue; too much pain to care what the impact was going to be of what he would see. She yanked the metal shelving unit away from the wall, sending it crashing to the floor before she shoved open the hidden door to her inner sanctum.
She kept her hand clenched to her forehead as the floor blurred and swayed beneath her amidst fragments of images as vivid as if they were playing out right in front of her.
She reached down and grabbed a pencil from the pile on the floor and, amidst flashes of white light, she began to draw.
* * *
Eden stood in the entrance to the dark room, the weak candlelight behind him and the depleting sparks emanating through Jessie’s scorched dress the only sources of light.
She was stood with her back to him, doing what, he at first thought, was scratching at the wall with her fingers. But as his eyes adjusted, he saw she wasn’t scratching at all: she was drawing, the graphite of her pencil rasping against painted stone.
He scanned the room, only then seeing faint outlines on the walls. He backed up and grabbed the candle, taking it in with him.
He stepped up to the wall to his left, the flame igniting the images, before he turned to see each of the four walls were covered with a tapestry of hand-drawn images. He looked up at the relatively low ceiling, the lack of windows. Whatever it had once been, it seemed to be some kind of additional storage chamber. He looked down at the stubs of pencils on the floor. And whatever this was playing out around him, it was weeks of work.
He stepped up alongside her.
‘Jess?’
As he looked into her focused eyes, she was glazed, fixated on the image she was drawing as if in a trance. Her hand worked with impressive speed and accuracy as she sketched, the detail intricate in whatever she was creating.
And the detail was monstrous.
Because as he passed the three foot of blank wall next to her on his way around the periphery of the room, that was exactly what the images increasingly became – monstrous.
Moving clockwise from the blank strip of wall as logic dictated, it began with two intertwi
ned figures, one almost indistinguishable from the other. They looked to be locked inside a dome, a cityscape their backdrop, the sky above oppressive in its intensity. Despite the darkness pressing in on them, they appeared to be giving off some kind of glow.
Eden stepped closer to examine the detail in the ground beneath them, the buildings that surrounded them, to see they were constructed of a myriad of interwoven limbs and tortured faces. Replicating the images he had seen on the easel, seeing so many of them, all clustered together, was as unsettling as the dark tomb he had joined Jessie in.
He recoiled from the despair he was witnessing, glanced at Jessie still working meticulously with her pencil. As if sleepwalking, she remained unaware of him – unaware of anything other than her drawing.
Moving further along the wall, he was looking for some kind of logic, but it didn’t make sense – as if pieces were missing or they were just random images that his mind felt the need to turn into a story.
There was definitely something progressive in it though – the myriad of limbs and tortured faces revealing a whole new layer beneath by the time he’d reached the adjacent wall. This layer was even more monstrous than the one above. These images were malevolent, animated in their movements and expressions, swirling amongst each other in contortions that told him they were anything but human as they dragged themselves in and out of the fermented darkness beneath.
In the next scene along, the ground had split as if there had been some kind of an eruption – some kind of fragmentation allowing whatever was in the lowest level to seep through to the top.
On the third wall, above a collage of varying landscapes, was a star – a bright, large, disproportionate star breaking through the darkness. It should have been reassuring against the night sky but, gradually, the stars around it began to fall – bright twinkles hitting the ground and evaporating as the image progressed. With it, darkness intensified across the landscapes until one could no longer be differentiated from the other.
The pair of domed figures had reappeared, except now they were separated and no longer alone. Six others accompanied them, along with a mass of regimented figures indistinguishable from each other. The interwoven layers and landscapes were dominated by the swirling mass of a battle – so many faces twisted and contorted in anger, horror and anguish.
The starlight still glowed above, but this time it was a glow of darkness against a backdrop of light – a darkness that was intensifying as it spread closer and closer to where Jessie furiously worked.
Eden became short of breath, as if the air had been sucked out of the room. As he scanned the room again, he could hear a distant backdrop of voices, could feel the pain and desperation, the room, despite the chill, suddenly becoming stifling as if he was amidst a jostling crowd. His head started to ache as if there was something heavy above him; he felt the gush of a breeze on his neck though the candle he was holding didn’t so much as flicker.
A candle he dropped to the floor as Jessie’s body did the same, Eden just catching her in time to stop her head hitting concrete.
She lay limp in his arms in the darkness, her eyes disturbingly open for a few more seconds until all light faded.
‘Jess?’ he asked again.
But her head slipped off centre.
His heart pounded as he checked for her pulse, a wave of uncharacteristic panic washing away all thoughts beyond her. It took a few seconds to locate it, the third-species heart pumping so much slower than its human counterpart. But then he felt it – that and her breath on his cheek as he bent over to listen.
The relief that flowed through him warmed his chilled skin as he cradled her up in his arms, thankful to be free of the oppression of the room as he carried Jessie through to the sofa.
He picked her cardigan up from the floor, searched the darkness for the matches, found a candle and lit it.
He took his place in the corner of the sofa, rested Jessie’s head on his lap. He gently brushed her hair away from her face, held his hand on her neck, his only comfort, along with her closeness, being her continued pulse beneath his palm.
29
Jessie didn’t wake up cold like she usually felt, coming around on the unforgiving concrete floor. Instead she woke feeling enveloped by warmth. There was something firm yet comforting beneath her head, and her hand didn’t feel like her own, her fingers prised apart by something.
She instinctively flexed her bound fingers to realise they were interlaced with another’s. As she tilted her head to look up, Eden raised his head from resting on the back of the sofa, so his gaze could meet hers.
A split second later she realised her head was in his lap. She was covered in one of the throws. The room was still shrouded in candlelight. Her headache had routinely lifted now she had let out the overbearing images in her head.
She could barely remember anything of what had happened after tearing away from him, after falling to the floor. She remembered his questions. She remembered the word “angel”. She remembered thinking only of ridding herself of the pain in her head.
She glanced behind her at where the door still lay open, the secrets within now exposed.
She slammed her hand over her eyes. ‘Shit,’ she hissed quietly.
‘Busted,’ he said.
She parted her fingers to peer up at him, searching his eyes for any sign of how he felt about what he’d seen – of her. But there was no fear, no horror, no disgust in his eyes, just his thumb gently working a lock of her hair.
‘I’m afraid that trick stopped working the minute you were old enough to pull your own socks up,’ he said, peeling her fingers away to reveal her eyes fully. ‘I’m still here.’
‘You saw everything?’
‘I have to say I’ve never had that happen mid-session before, but hey, I’m all for new experiences.’
‘Fuck,’ she cursed quietly as she eased herself from his lap to sit side-on to him.
He rubbed the back of his neck as if the position had been awkward for him, her knowing it could sometimes take anything up to a couple of hours before she came out of the trance-induced exhaustion.
‘How long has it been?’
‘No more than an hour,’ he said, leaning his elbows on his spread thighs as he bent forward alongside her. ‘Has the pain eased?’
She nodded.
‘An angel, huh?’
She tucked her hair behind her ear so she could look at him fully. ‘Envoi,’ she corrected him. ‘Just one class of what, I suppose, you could term as angels.’
‘Your existence has never been proven, in all these decades. There’s been so much speculation about your kind, but never one that came forward to confirm or deny.’
And there were good reasons for that. Very good reasons.
As she looked back into his eyes, she had to ask. ‘Does it bother you? What I am?’
He exhaled tersely. He looked genuinely bewildered by the question. ‘Why would it bother me?’
She shrugged. ‘My kind carry a lot of connotations – if you believe all you read. I didn’t know if it would make you uncomfortable…with everything that’s happened between us.’
He smiled. ‘Darling, if hell exists, I’m going to be rotting there for far more than bedding an angel.’
She smiled back, but it was fleeting.
‘Are there more of you?’ he asked.
‘In Blackthorn?’ She shrugged. ‘Probably.’
‘You haven’t come across any others?’
She raised her eyebrows – something that should have been an answer in itself. ‘In this row?’
‘Fair point,’ he said. He frowned pensively. ‘I don’t get it. Aren’t your kind supposed to be super powerful? How can Pummel control you just from a necklace?’
She tongued the back of her teeth as she looked at the floor. She warily met his gaze again. It was time he knew more about her. Understood more about her. ‘Because it’s a punishment.’
His frown deepened. ‘For what?’
/> ‘Disobedience is the most probable. My species might be powerful, but by our very existence we’re servants – whether to battle, to guardianship or to visions, we have a purpose. If we defy what we are, we’re punished. That necklace is the ball and chain around my ankle. My punishment is passed from human to human, only to be broken on finding one selfless enough to give me up.’
‘Then can you destroy it – the necklace?’
‘If the necklace is destroyed, I die with it.’ She glanced at the floor then back at Eden. ‘Nothing is ever that simple.’
His frown deepened. ‘So the last one who had you had your necklace? Why did he give it to Pummel? Why not give it you?’
‘Because Toby didn’t have it. He’d given it back to me decades before. One of Pummel’s men found it the night they broke in. They didn’t know what it was but the minute they handed it to Pummel, it was a lost cause. I can’t retaliate against whoever owns it. It’s like they’re surrounded in a barrier I can’t penetrate. Even to attempt it is excruciating. Like I said before, Toby told Pummel what he had to in order to save my life.’ She scraped her socked foot across the rough concrete, watching its path. ‘Some days I wish he hadn’t.’
Eden caught hold of her hand, interlacing his fingers with hers. ‘I’m glad he did.’
She met his gaze again. This time she let herself linger. ‘I’ve thought about ending it all some days. But I’m not going to let that bastard beat me, Eden. Whoever inflicted this on me – I’m not going to let them win either.’
Eden squeezed his fingers tighter into hers. ‘How did you meet this Toby?’
Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) Page 32