And that didn’t scare me.
Scorazterax had smacked me in the face with the truth. You love it. You have no plan. You want to live forever?
I wanted to live as long as Mella needed me. That was all.
Plus Mella didn’t think I was a horse’s ass.
“Can we start over?” I murmured to her hair. “I’m still really horny.”
“You’re always horny,” she giggled.
And that’s how my list began. Number one: stay horny for Mella.
“You conquered me with one look. If you had chosen Mutt, you’d be with someone who understood your warrior heart,” I said with sorrow.
“Maybe I needed someone I didn’t have to fight,” she murmured.
I sighed. “That’s not me.”
She pulled herself to sit cross-legged on the stone slab. “Maybe,” she said, “I’m supposed to teach you how to fight. And you’re supposed to teach me not to.”
“You’re teaching me how to make love,” I said positively.
She dimpled. “And yet, so far tonight, no sex.” She leaned forward and brushed my arms and chest with her hands. “Can’t we talk later?”
I looked down. “I can’t even get your boots off.”
She laughed out loud at that. “I was fucking with you. Look.” She put her hands on the backs of her legs and in two seconds she had unzipped her army boots.
“You—why—you—” I sputtered. I heaved myself onto the stone slab on top of her. “You should be punished for that!”
“I knew it!” she crowed. “Here it comes. Mister Righteous again!”
I wrestled her down and began tickling her.
“Help! Stop! You stinker! I’ll get you for that!” She shrieked and giggled and tickled me back, and I felt better. She was a really good tickler. Pretty soon she had me rolling off the slab onto the floor to get away from her quick fingers.
She leaned over the edge of the slab to laugh down at me. “What was that?”
“We have fun in the Home Office.” I panted and smiled up at her.
“I guess so. Wow, your eyes are glowing,” she blurted. “Your skin is glowing. Is that real, or is it just me feeling soppy about you?”
That made my breath catch. “You think I glow?”
“It’s like that light you made between your hands and stuck up there.” She jerked her thumb at the ceiling. “As if it got inside you.”
Happiness began to bloom in me. “It’s how we are at the Home Office,” I said. “When you love someone, you see them glowing.”
I stood and placed her zip-up boots neatly side-by-side at the tomb door.
“But I’m not from the Home Office.”
I came back to the slab and sat next to her.
A foolish grin spread over my face. “Maybe I’m contagious.”
She tried to argue with me some more. Instead of answering, I peeled off her tight, shiny shorts, and then her fishnets, both legs at once, so that she had to stop wriggling and arguing. She made me hold still long enough to take off my borrowed leather pants. Then she flung off her sleeveless shirt, unhooked her bra, and tossed it on top of her boots.
I reached for her big, round breasts. “Am I still glowing?” I said, greedy to know.
She looked at my lap and bugged her eyes out. “Oh, yeah.”
“You’re mocking me again.”
She smiled up into my eyes at this. “Yup.” She reached up and rubbed her hand over my buzz-cut scalp. “Even your hair glows. Crazy.” Her hand cupped my face. “Will I ever glow for you?” She swallowed hard.
After a moment I realized she was asking me if I loved her.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
She shook her head.
“Yes, I love you. I can’t believe I didn’t say it yet.”
She gave my face a gentle slap. “Duh. You’re a guy.”
“Can I—” I turned my face to kiss her palm. “Can I try something?”
“Anything.” She snuggled up to me in a distracting way. “You know I’m up for experiments.”
“I want to try to take your earrings and, uh, things out. Very gently, I promise.”
“Some of them aren’t supposed to come out.”
“The thing is, I want to show you the glow. But it shorts out on the metal.”
After a pause she said, “Okay.”
I started with her earrings, using just my lips and tongue. She sure had a lot of earrings. Some of them unhooked, but some seemed to be welded on. To distract her while I bit the metal loops open, I lay back on the slab and pulled her on top of me so I could explore the rest of her body with my hands. As each ring came out, I kissed the hole she’d made in her flesh trying to prove she couldn’t be hurt—kissed it with all the love I had, until I felt it heal and close up.
Meanwhile she was distracting me terribly with her own hands.
“If you do that, I might yank too hard,” I said, after spitting a silver loop across the tomb to go ping on the stone wall.
She pulled and stropped my cock with her hot little hands. “So?”
“If I have to hold you down,” I began.
“Make me.”
I captured her hands and held them to my chest. “Keek.”
She looked everywhere but at my eyes, and then she stopped moving and faced me. “What.”
“Let me show you how much I love you.”
In answer, she gave a theatrical sigh.
“We always rush this. We’re like animals mating in a hurry before the hunters come.”
“Why, Jeff, that’s poetry.”
“I used to watch the Discovery Channel. C’mon, Keek.”
She rolled her eyes, but she agreed to hold still. I got the rings out of her eyebrows, her nose, and her lip. She had to help me with the stud in her tongue. Then I smoothed my hands over her until she lay quietly on the slab.
“Wait,” she said. “There’s a few more.”
“I know.”
I licked down her throat to her poor, beautiful nipples and worked the little rods out of them, licking and healing them and licking some more until she squirmed and arched and said my name in a very satisfactory way. Then I got to the stud in her navel.
At last I parted her knees.
She gave a long moaning sigh. “Thank goodness,” she said.
My heart swelled.
That little pink thing down there, I’d often noticed before, had a bit of metal sticking through it. I’d always assumed it was normal ornamentation, until she’d explained to me tonight why she’d done it. Now I couldn’t wait to get rid of it, and heal her, and lavish her with love until she forgot everything and everyone who had ever hurt her.
I licked and licked and nibbled at it and twisted it. Keek made lots of happy noises.
Twenty minutes later I said, “I give up. How does this come out?”
When she got her breath back she said, “What do you think? It unscrews.” She seemed to think this was hilarious.
While she laughed at me, I unscrewed the last bit of metal and, getting a fresh grip on her thighs, buckled down to mending her punctured flesh and filling it with love. Then I climbed higher and filled her with my cock.
We lay in the grass, boneless, our limbs wrapped up in each other.
“Now what would you like me to do?” He took my shoulders in his hands and grazed along my skin from one shoulder, along my collarbone, up my neck, across my chin, down the side of my neck, across my collarbone, over to my other shoulder.
“Mmm. No fair. That last one was my request. Now you’re going to ask for what you want. I’m warning you in advance, I’ll say yes,” I said.
“How is that different from me doing something to you?”
“Okay, I’ll probably say yes.”
“Then you ask for something after I do,” he said firmly.
“Get at it, I’m expiring here,” I said. I couldn’t believe I’d spoken so boldly. It seemed easy to demand stuff from Mutt. He was gorgeous and scary a
nd just a big baby. I could be myself with him.
He rolled on top of me and took my shoulders between his hands and squeezed. “What. Do. You. Want. Now.” His face, mostly shadowed under the cemetery wall, went all demon-scowly and his horns popped out.
I gulped. “Do that some more,” I said. “The kissing-me-everywhere thing. Only this time.” I paused, and squirmed, wanting him inside me again, enough with the games already. “Put your—your knuckle between my legs.”
His eyes lit up. Really. Little red flames in each eye. He lifted off my hips and slid his hand slowly down my side. I filled with a happy sigh. He smiled then and bent his head to my collarbone again.
More butterfly kisses. And his hand moving slowly, slowly toward my crotch, which was going up in flames. It was distracting, but in a good way. Sometimes his lips nibbled my neck, my shoulder, my chin. Then his big hand slid like a big, hard, lumpy promise between my legs and pressed briefly up against my swollen, slippery pussy. I didn’t know which way was up. Everything felt good. He pressed again.
Zap.
I gasped.
“That’s two,” he murmured to the spot under my right ear.
If he meant orgasms, No it wasn’t, I was about to say, not yet, but then his knuckle started to move side-to-side, and a bolt of wow shot up through my body, and white lightning shut my brain down.
“Oh God,” I said, and grabbed his shoulders. “Oh, just fuck me, Mutt, I can’t stand it.”
“But I have to go slow,” he murmured.
I groaned loud and long. “Moooore!”
He worked his knuckle back and forth against my clit and I arched and flopped and arched and cracked in half—again—again—again—
“Mutt!”
He paused.
I flopped back down, feeling weak in the head.
“Gimme a minute. Then it’s your turn.”
“Why a minute?” he said.
“Because my nervous system is zinging with overload. My legs are twitching. And,” I said, taking a big breath, sitting up, and shoving him off my lap and over on his back in the grass, “I want to go down on you.”
“Is that the thing where you choke?” he said uncertainly. “Because I’m not sure I want to risk that.”
“Depends,” I said, letting him settle on his back while I stroked his legs. “I want to serve you.”
“I’d like that,” he said.
I got a good look at his erection. “Whoa.” His cock was paler than his belly, like a wand of light, and when I slid my hand around it, it quivered so much I thought I was in for an early protein conditioner treatment.
He was trying to sit up to look at what I was doing. I pushed him back onto his back.
“Mella?”
“Holler if this hurts,” I said, and leaned over him. “I’m an amateur.” The fact was, two boyfriends back in college had made me do this, and I’d hated it.
But I wanted it this time. My idea. If ordinary guys liked it so much, a sex-starved demon should go nuts.
At first I just licked. He was so big I was afraid I would choke after all. But he lay quiet. His hands gripped the wooden bottom edge of the wall behind us. I made a mental note that if I heard the wood crack, it was time to get out of the way of the hose. I licked his shaft, around the under-edge of his rim, and the soft mushroomy head of his cock. The tip leaked, and without thinking I licked that, too. Didn’t taste bad.
As if he heard me think that, he said, “Does it taste nasty?”
“You’re delicious.”
“I can make it better, I think.”
That made me laugh around his cock, and my teeth grazed the tip a little. He jerked, then quieted.
After a while I trusted him enough to take my hands off his cock and slide them up his belly. That’s when I realized how keyed up he was. His belly trembled. I bent over him and took him deep into my mouth, feeling his tip touch the back of my throat.
His belly convulsed.
Okay, take it easy with that.
I covered my teeth with my lips, grabbed his abs with all my fingers, and worked my mouth steadily up and down, sucking as I pulled off him, wiggling my tongue against him as I slid back down his shaft.
He was making little rhythmic whimpering noises.
Between my legs, where I knelt over them, his legs stiffened. His heels drummed on the ground.
I heard wood crack.
Here we go, I thought, and before I could move he’d grabbed my head and jerked up into a sitting position.
My mouth flooded with warm syrup. Minty-lemon-lime flavored.
I almost bit him in surprise.
Half an hour later, Jeff and I were lying naked and sweaty on the limestone slab in that tomb mound, listening to our heartbeats fade in our ears. I realized that there were three little triangular skylights in the roof of the tomb, as if pointing to compass points in a world with only three directions, each barely big enough to throw a baseball through.
I glanced over at him. In the dimness of this underground room, he glowed. I stroked his arm.
“Jeff?”
“Hm?”
“You were saying something about not giving up your brand.”
He gave a start and looked over at me. “Maybe.”
I wondered if he could see my expression in this dark place. “Were you talking about being an angel?”
He was silent for a moment. “Mutt and Baz explained it to me. I thought they were crazy, but I’m beginning to see, I think. You’re teaching me a lot,” he said, covering my hand.
“Corrupting you is more like,” I said gloomily.
“Two days ago I would have agreed. Now I think that might be harsh.”
“Hallefuckingluia. How so?”
“You all—here in the field—you all have such complicated lives. And all these other living things.”
“Like what?” I had no idea where this was going, but he wasn’t calling me evil yet, so yay hey.
“Like the possums and raccoons that sleep in here sometimes. The trees out there—” he gestured, then put his hand back, comfortingly, over mine “—rustling in the dark, growing leaves and roots and branches.”
“Rats and bats and birds and beetles,” I said.
“Yes.”
For another moment he was silent, and I held his hand, imagining all the rats and bats and beetles and other night creatures running around, minding their own business, pretty much ignoring us people.
“It really is about toothpaste, kind of. Some of you use one brand, some another. There’s two big brands. But lots of other littler ones. And some people don’t brush their teeth at all. And the animals, they probably would think we were crazy if they even knew what toothpaste is.”
“Now you’re confusing me again,” I said. Jeff when he didn’t understand the world—“the field”—was confusing enough. This was Jeff catching on? I wished he had better advisors than a couple of sex demons.
“So the Home Office and the Regional Office are always so focused on pushing their brands, they might not notice, um, something. Oh gosh, what was the word Baz used?”
“Whatever, honey.” I rolled over and curled up against him. “As long as you understand we’re different.”
“That’s just it,” he said. His voice tightened. He turned toward me, pulling my hand to his chest. “I love you. It’s weird for me. Where I come from, I loved everyone equally. At least, I thought I did. But you’re, well, I really see how different this love is.”
“Different.” What was he building up to? This couldn’t be good.
“It’s bigger.” He brought his face close to mine. It was so dark in there, I didn’t know if his eyes were open or closed. His tone got more tense.
“Keek, my love for you makes me want to give you everything. In some ways I feel I don’t need anything but you—not food or sleep or anything.”
“Okay.”
“But then I realize—Keek, I don’t want to give up my brand. I’m an angel. I d
on’t know anything except how the Home Office brought me up. I don’t think I’ll ever want to be less than an angel.”
In the dark, I found his face with my palm. “You’re amazing,” I said. “Jeff, I don’t want you to give up your brand. You’re a really sweet guy, and your brand is a big part of that.”
“Really?” he said hopefully.
“Really.”
“Because I reviewed the rules, and I think we can get around the fallen woman thing,” he said. “And the fallen…angel.”
I touched my forehead to his. “You were very close to death there for a minute buddy. I’m speaking metaphorically here.”
“I’m not,” he said, his voice infused with caution. “Bear with me a moment. I think I’ve worked it out that if we get married—”
“What?” I sat up.
“If we get married, then it’s okay for us to have sex all the time. By Home Office rules.”
My mouth opened and shut.
“Because I really like sex,” he rushed on. “Really, really.”
“I can tell,” I said, bemused.
“I mean, it’s so good that it should have a separate brand all by itself.”
“Brand?” Again with the brand. I was going to have to pay closer attention to this goofy idea of his.
“You know. Good. Evil. And sex.”
I thought I was getting it now. “How about good, evil, sex, grasshoppers, drag races, hummus, cantilevered double-bascule bridges—”
“Toothpaste.”
“Aaaand toothpaste. I get it.”
He actually clapped his hands. “So?” he said eagerly.
“So? So what?”
“Can we get married?”
“I’ll consider it. Like, for about five years.”
“I don’t think I can wait that long,” he said wistfully. “I really like sex.”
“Waidaminit, you’re suggesting we not have sex until we get married? Forget it. For one thing, you don’t have the self-control to hold out that long. I sure don’t.”
“I know,” he said in a small voice. “That’s where my brand comes in. You see, Keek, I want to keep my brand. And I really want to keep sex.”
And this was what I got for falling in love with an angel.
I gave it some thought.
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