Gods & Monsters

by Saffron A Kent

  He’s taken away my free will with his command, and I step out of the pool of my black dress, my yellow hair swishing across my back. With shaking hands, I do the deed. I unhook my bra and let it fall, and I bend and slide down my panties. The air that brushes against my nipples and my wet slit is heated and cold at the same time.

  I stand up straight. Naked. Completely, utterly naked.

  His eyes go wide and hungry. The fingers clutching the neck of the camera flex and jerk. His lips move but no sound comes out. Though it looks like he’s cursing and saying something to the effect of fuck me.

  He doesn’t know where to look first. I watch him watch me, trace my naked breasts, my jutting nipples, and then drop down to my core, the wet curls around it.

  For a second, I think he’s going to abandon the whole photography session and pounce on me. He’s going to lose all patience, sate his desire on my body, uncaring of my comfort, uncaring that like him, this is my first time too, and take everything from me. It would’ve scared me yesterday, but yesterday I was just a girl in love. Today, I worship him. I’m not afraid — nervous and trembling and excited, yes, but not afraid.

  Somehow, he manages to get his wild breathing under control and keep a firm grip on his camera. With his free hand though, he reaches down to the distinct bulge in his jeans, massaging the hardness. I want to shout that I should be the one to touch it. Let me. But I’m mute. If my sex was wet before, it’s gushing now. It’s swelling and there’s a strong buzz in my clit. Especially when he lowers his gaze and focuses on it — on my core.

  “I love your curls.” His gaze is glued to it, pinning me in place.

  I jerk at his words, almost disbelieving that he’s bringing it up. He’s touched them before, my curls, but never seen them. But still. People don’t just bring it up. I should’ve known though. Abel Adams doesn’t follow rules, does he?

  “I, uh, I sort of don’t want anything sharp around my… you know.”

  “I like it.”

  “You do?”

  He nods. “It just means I gotta work a little harder to take what’s mine. And if I want your pussy shaved, I’ll be the one to do it.”

  Wait a second, what? Did he just say that he’s going to… shave me?

  That’s gross. So why am I clenching my thighs together, picturing his long fingers holding a blade?

  The air thickens and the time to talk is over. He motions with his chin. “Get on the bed.”

  My legs give out and I sit on the edge before sliding back. His rumpled dark sheets are scratchy against my skin, almost like his hand but not as warm or as brimming with life and energy.

  “Lie down.”

  I do it. I sigh when my head hits the pillow. Not because it’s soft, no. His pillow is lumpy and I can’t imagine him sleeping on it. But the fact that he does, that this is where he rests his head at night, floods my body with all the love for this boy.

  Only he’s not a boy.

  He’s all man, with bronzed muscles and dark eyes.

  Watching him from my position, lying on his bed, makes me feel vulnerable and small and… cherished. As if just by looming over me like a shadow, he can protect me from every disaster in the world.

  Abel has to visibly gather himself at the sight of me. His fingers keep flexing at the sight of my breasts, like he’s imagining his hands squeezing them. I’m imagining that too. He keeps swallowing, licking his lips when he focuses on my core, like he’d rather be licking that than his mouth. My toes curl.

  Again, he finds it in himself to keep going. He narrows his eyes and cocks his head, studying me. Objectively. He’s thinking how does he want me. He’s thinking how should he re-arrange my limbs to get the shot he wants. The one he’ll be staring at, on lonely nights for the next four weeks.

  Biting his lip, he wears the camera around his neck and bends down. Our eyes meet and I gulp. There’s such fire in the depths of his gaze, heated and scorching. It’s a surprise I haven’t melted yet. I clutch the sheets, crossing my thighs, pressing them together hard.

  In complete contrast to his intense gaze, his fingers run over my stomach, casually, lightly. I tuck my tummy in, holding in a breath. He circles my belly button, making the flesh tremble and break out in goosebumps. The same fingers travel to the side and trace long-ago scars from the bruises. He’s angry, his fingers trembling like my body.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I assure him in a whisper and give him a small smile to tell him that I’m okay.

  He grits his teeth but doesn’t say anything. His fingers though? They don’t stop. They travel upward, tracing the underside of my breasts, the valley between them. He even flicks a nipple, like it’s an afterthought, and it beads, turning an angry shade of red. I gasp out his name, arching my back. My thighs are slick; I’m pretty sure I’m leaving my wetness on his bed.

  I reach out to touch him but he moves away, leaving me clutching the cold air instead of warm skin.

  “Lift up your arms. Put them on the pillow.” He readies the camera, brings it up to his face.

  Damn it. I hate this. Is this how he’s been feeling all this time? All horny and restless, with no relief in sight?

  I am a cock-tease, then. So I obey now. I put my arms on the pillow.

  “Arch your back,” he says.

  I do that, too.

  But Abel isn’t satisfied. He lowers the camera, studying my body once again. Then, he begins to arrange my limbs to his satisfaction. He presses his open palm on my lower stomach and my spine comes off the bed in a sharp angle. He curls his hands over mine and makes them clutch the pillow tight. He even goes as far as to arrange my legs: folding one leg up and forcing my thighs to smash together.

  It’s like I’m rocking myself to orgasm on his bed. Only I’m not. I’m staying still so he can capture the fantasy.

  And then, a current runs along the length of my spine when I hear the click. Then, click, click, click.

  “Bite your lip,” he says.

  I do it.

  Click. Click. Click.

  “Put one hand on your stomach.”

  My hand goes to my stomach.

  “Perfect,” he whispers, and I smile slightly. “Fuck, hold that pose.”

  I hold it.

  Click, click, click.

  I moan and even though you can’t capture sound in a picture, something might have changed on my face because Abel praises me again, and takes multiple shots.

  With every click, I become more aroused, more lustful, more free. My core is juicing up, all sensitive. My nipples are throbbing. My heart is close to bursting with all the love I feel for him.

  He circles the bed, bends this way and that, squinting his eyes, looking at me through the lens. And I pose for him, obey his every command to the fullest.

  Suck on your thumb.

  Pinch your nipple.

  Squeeze your tit.

  Lie on your side. Arch up your ass.

  I do everything. Every single thing. I moan, twist my hips, gasp. I give in to the sensations. Though in the back of my mind, I realize he never asks me to open my legs and show off my slit. He never asks to see it. I wonder why.

  He’s growing sweatier, his voice turning raspier. Finally, the time comes when he lowers the camera with shaking hands and just stares at me with naked eyes. His noisy breathing fills the room.

  “Tell me you want this,” he croaks.

  “I do.”

  He goes all loose, then. Years of chasing has taken a toll on my Abel. In a flash, his camera is gone and so is his t-shirt. My eyes try to latch on to every expanse of his bare chest. His tight pecs, those little brown nipples on the slabs, the hard lines and grooves of his stomach, his belly button almost hidden under the thatch of hair that trails down to where his jeans are riding low on his hips.

  I hold my arms open for my god and he prowls toward me. My legs spread on their own and he’s in between them, his pants scraping against the soft skin of my inner thighs.

  When he’s fac
e to face with me, I whisper, “You never asked to see my… you know. Didn’t you want a picture of it?”

  He shudders, fisting my hair, his chuckle sounding more like a rusty bark. “I was trying to be a good guy. A guy who doesn’t ask his girlfriend to flash her pussy just so he can capture it and jerk off to it later.”

  I put my hand on his sweaty back; it’s rippling with muscles. “But you are that guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you should know that I’m that girl too. I would’ve done it. I would’ve done anything for you.”

  There’s peace in admitting that. So much peace in giving in that I smile. He groans and grips my chin fiercely. “You should look up at the ceiling and start praying to God. Because this is it. I’m not gonna stop. Do you understand that? I’m not gonna stop because I’ve waited too long for this. You’ve made me wait too long, and I’m too hard up. I’m too starved for it. For your pink cunt. And you know what else?”

  I shake my head, clutching the strands of his hair.

  “I’ve looked into the eyes of your God and I’ve prayed to Him. Me. I don’t even believe in Him. You’ve reduced me to that. You’ve reduced me to believing in something that doesn’t even exist.”

  I’m gushing. My pink cunt, as he calls it — my heart, my eyes. Everything is filled to the brim with hormones, lust and love.

  But his warnings are useless right now. I hook my legs around his hips and shudder with the first contact of his naked skin. I clutch the silver cross, dangling from his neck, hitting me on the chin. “What do you pray for?”

  He gets even closer to me, the slight hair on his strong chest rubbing against my engorged nipples. “For you. For you to be on your knees in front of me. Looking at me with your innocent eyes, while I wrap your sweet yellow hair around my wrist and feed you my cum. Every last drop of it. And when it’s all gone, I pray that you beg me with your pouty lips to fuck you. So I can claim that last part of you as you’ve claimed every single part of me.” Another rusty laugh. “Isn’t that crazy, huh? I pray to a god who’s dead. He probably died a long time ago.”

  I blink to get rid of the tears and tighten my limbs around him to fuse us together. “Fuck me, Abel. Please.”

  It’s a whisper but he hears it, and then his entire frame crashes down on me. He’s kissing me with his mouth, with his fingers, his palms, his feet… his entire body hugs me like his mouth hugs mine while we’re kissing. Every part of me touches every part of him. Even our hearts touch, through our chests.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  I’ve never heard that sound before. So loud. Two hearts beating as one. But then the sound changes, morphs into something else. Something even louder. Rougher and angry and insistent.

  We break apart, our breaths crashing against each other. The door of his apartment vibrates. It’s almost on the verge of breaking down. An explosion. Abel opens it at the last second to save it from getting torn apart.

  But my world explodes anyway. Because on the other side are my parents and their wrath-filled eyes.

  I thought I was living in the apocalypse for the past two years. I thought my world was already destroyed – nothing could be worse than not seeing Abel, not being able to touch him.

  I was wrong.

  This is worse. This is the end of my world. The earthquake. The destruction. Only nothing beautiful will come out of this. No new worlds or fresh air will be born after this.

  There is no after.

  I sit inside my bedroom, under my barred window, and things that happened hours before come to me in pieces.

  The screaming, the shouting, the angry eyes. The sting of a slap that my mom threw at me when she saw my naked body wrapped up in a sheet. The crying. Oh God, the crying. Mom’s and mine. Her hiccups, my hiccups. Her calling me a whore, saying how I ruined things for myself and for my family. How I gave up my precious virginity to a worthless boy.

  “I always knew it. I always knew he’d ruin you. Do you think I can’t see? Do you think I don’t get it? I’m your mother. Did he force you? Tell me he forced you. It’s better to call it a rape than whatever this is.”

  “He didn’t force me,” I sobbed. “He didn’t do anything. Nothing happened.”

  But most of all, I remember Abel’s face. His anger. It was probably scarier than anything else inside that room.

  “Leave her alone,” he thundered. “Don’t you fucking touch her. Don’t you fucking touch my Pixie. She’s mine.”

  His shouts were more of a shock to them than my naked body.

  They don’t know, you see. They don’t understand my Abel. They don’t understand that when a boy with enough heat to burn the sun falls in love with a girl, he torches the whole world. They don’t get his intensity, his passion.

  He didn’t stop with words, he descended on them, especially on my mom, his eyes ablaze, his body massive and heaving. He would’ve killed her, I know it. He would’ve killed her if not for that sound.

  The sound that even now doesn’t let me sleep: the shatter of his camera.

  Things ground to a halt when my dad found it. I’d never seen him this mad. I’d never seen my dad’s eyes red and filled with hatred. He threw the camera at the wall, smashing it into a million pieces.

  Abel simply stood there, watching his prized possession break like our hearts were breaking. Then my dad turned to me. He looked at me like I was really a whore. A bad seed. A daughter who really ruined everything.

  “Did he… Did you let him take your picture like this?” my dad asked, his eyes brimming with angry, accusing tears.

  “Dad, it’s not like that. I-I…We love each other. It’s not… bad or anything.” I begged him. “I love him, Dad. Please. Don’t be mad.”

  It took Dad a few seconds to adjust to my confession. In those few seconds, I prayed to God. I asked for my dad’s understanding. I prayed for him to look beyond his anger and understand. Abel and I had done nothing wrong.

  Amidst my mom’s screams and accusations, my dad approached the love of my life and took a swing at him. My dad, the one person I counted on to listen to me, hear my side of things, tore apart the dreams I’d woven over the years. I knew then, that he’d never get it. He’d never understand. No one will, probably. But then, I shouldn’t have been surprised, right? My dad hardly ever came to my rescue.

  Abel didn’t move. He took it. With his eyes on me, he took the beating, never retaliated. I could see him making fists at his sides, veins standing stark and alert, but he didn’t do anything.

  I begged my dad to stop.

  “I love him, Dad. Please. Let him go. He didn’t do anything. Nothing happened between us.”

  I begged and begged, but nothing. A few minutes later, they dragged me out of Abel’s apartment naked, with only a blanket wrapped around my body. Mom muttered something about me being a slut and I deserved to be paraded around like one. This will teach you to whore yourself out in the name of love.

  Abel was breathing loudly, a drop of blood almost snaking down to his lashes. “Pixie! Don’t take her away. Leave her alone. I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill everyone. Don’t hurt her.”

  His eyes held a manic light when my gaze met his for a brief moment. I was a mess of my former self, the one that arrived, panting and desperate to see him. I’m sorry, I mouthed as he disappeared from my view.

  Outside, people flooded the street, talking, watching, some giving me glares, others giving me sympathetic stares.

  Her mother probably didn’t teach her anything.

  She’s the last person we expected to turn up pregnant but that’s what’s going to happen.

  Maybe Abel forced her? I can’t imagine quiet, bookish Evie doing this.

  God, what a slut.

  Quiet ones are the worst ones, you know. All that pent-up sexual aggression.

  I heard my mom saying that he forced me, took my photo naked, tricked me. “But what else did you expect from an Adams? I just didn’t expect this from my daughter.”


  “He didn’t force me. I love him. We’re in love,” I screamed, to everyone and no one in particular.

  I probably looked like a crazy girl. Loose hair, no clothes, messed-up face, running eyes and nose, standing in the middle of the street, screaming about her love. But I didn’t care. I wanted everyone to know.

  “I love Abel. I love him. I’ve loved him for years. He didn’t force me. Nothing happened between us.”

  My shouts echoed in the night, rose louder than any thunder, but no one listened. They still blamed Abel. They still talked about sending me away to find God and throwing Abel in jail for his crimes. At the mention of jail, I tried to run. I tried to get away from the mob and go to him, warn him or something. But someone grabbed me from behind, stepping onto my sheet, almost ripping it away from my body. I heard snickers. Their eyes looking at me with judgement and hatred, my mom hissing insults in my ear

  Not one person listened to me. The one person I thought would listen to me, my dad, strode up the stairs with the cop, Mr. Knight.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Sky shakes me. I wonder where she came from. I realize I’m still sitting on the floor, right under my barred window, still thinking about last night, reliving the horror over and over. From the numbness and stiffness of my body, I spent hours down here.

  “Wh-what?”

  “God, you’re shaking.” Sky rubs my back and moves the tangled hair off my face.

  I blink at her; my vision is a little foggy. “What’re you doing here?”

  She lifts me up and walks me to my bed. “I wanted to check on you, and good thing I came, huh? You look like a disaster.” Grimacing, she sits beside me. “Sorry, that came out wrong. I mean, you do look like one and I hate that. Anyway, look, we don’t have much time, okay? Your mom’s not home. Thank God. And your dad let me come up but only for a few minutes.”

  She’s talking too fast for me. I can’t understand her. I’m still stuck in the moment where my dad went back to Abel’s apartment with a cop.