Fallen Angel - A Short Story

by Jayne Lockwood



  Fallen Angel

  A Short Story By

  Jayne Lockwood

  Copyright Jayne Lockwood 2013

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  FALLEN ANGEL

  He came from nowhere, executed a neat forward roll and landed prone, on his back, beneath the front wheels of Rachel’s car.

  She was too preoccupied with the news she and fifty of her work colleagues had had that morning, when the threat of their losing their jobs had finally become a reality. Christmas had evaporated in a haze of gloom, even though it was barely two weeks away. By the end of the following week, the new CEO of her software company would make his decision as to who should stay and who should go. They had not even met him. He had been making decisions about their future from a plush office in Manhattan. It was only when he was required to give the killer blow that they would actually see him for the first time.

  As weeks went, she had had better. The date she had been looking forward to for weeks had cancelled at the last moment the previous night, citing a sudden attack of boils. Boils? She would have been more sympathetic if he had just said he wasn’t interested. The one before that had confessed over dessert that he was actually married. And the one before that was transsexual. All respect to him for saying so, but she would have appreciated him telling her before she had spent £200 on new lingerie.

  So she had a Damocles Sword of imminent unemployment hanging over her head, no prospect of any sex or even a staid goodnight kiss by the front door for the foreseeable future, and her finances were nonexistent. Not surprising then, that when the perfect man had stumbled in front of her car, she had not even seen him.

  ‘Oh my God, no!’ She gasped as she felt the impact, strangely soft, and saw the feet sticking out beyond her bonnet. The man behind beeped impatiently in the narrow, parked-up street they had been driving in, but she ignored him and scrambled out of the car to assess the damage.

  By the time she knelt down beside him, he was attempting to sit up. He gazed at her with eyes as brilliant as crystal-cut emeralds.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she gasped, holding back useless tears. ‘I’ll call an ambulance!’

  ‘No!’ He seemed alarmed. Unbelievably, he was pulling himself away from her. ‘I am okay.’ He spoke as if he was unused to the language, yet she could not ascertain any accent. He straightened to his full height, which was considerable now he was standing up, brushed road dust off his black suit jacket and adjusted his white cuffs. ‘I am fine.’ He closed his eyes for a moment and put his hand on her shoulder to steady himself, and in that instant, not knowing why, Rachel believed him.

  She also felt compelled to invite him back to her flat, although one of her golden rules was not to. Guilt did not come into it. It just seemed to be the right thing to do, under the circumstances. She felt she owed him a cup of coffee at the very least.

  He was the most attractive man that had ever sat in her car, with pale skin and slender lips, curved in a secret smile. His hair was black as ravens feathers, contrasting sharply with his white silk shirt. She concentrated on driving with an effort, and subtly eased her short black skirt down towards her knees, aware of the direction of his gaze. There was no more conversation, but he stared frankly at her legs for the remainder of the journey.

  ‘You haven’t told me your name,’ she said as they entered her neat apartment. The small Tesco Christmas tree she had felt obliged to buy stood gloomily in the corner, its black synthetic branches perfectly representing her state of mind when she had bought it.

  ‘Thedriel.’

  ‘That’s ... unusual. What does it mean?’ She asked, mentally rolling the name around inside her head. It was not like anything she had ever heard before.

  He slipped his jacket off and draped it on the chair. Something about the way he did it made her chest tighten.

  ‘I don’t know. It was just the name I was given,’ he said. When his emerald eyes met with hers, any more questions seemed unnecessary. Slightly flustered, she turned to put the tree lights on, but she had already done it. They flickered softly, casting the room in a soft glow. She could have sworn they weren’t on when they went in, and she could not remember them looking that good anyway. She stared at the tree, then back at him, but he was watching her innocently, having made himself comfortable on her sofa.

  He refused tea, coffee and any form of alcohol. Instead he sipped at water, but he seemed in no hurry to leave. After a while, Rachel realised she was talking to him as if she had known him all her life. Her desperate job situation, the divorce, the hazardous dating game, all of it was laid out as a smorgasbord of delights for him to pick over. And all the while, he ventured nothing about himself, even when pressed.

  ‘You’re like the man who wasn’t there,’ she said mischievously, after he dodged yet another question. By that time she was halfway through her second glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and feeling more content than she had for weeks.

  He smiled at her from his prone position on the sofa. He had taken off his tie and his elegant feet were bare. ‘I’m working on a company takeover.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re one of the enemy,’ she said agreeably.

  He inclined his head gracefully. ‘It isn’t something I boast about.’

  ‘Good.’ She poured a generous splash of red into her glass and picked it up. ‘The last time I’ll be able to afford decent wine for a while. Might as well make the most of it.’ She toasted him with her glass and he watched her, it seemed, as if he were waiting for the right moment. Still she was not alarmed.

  Throughout the evening she had been aware of a persistent heaviness in her breasts. But she had just finished her cycle, so it was not that. They felt tight and full, as they had done eighteen years before when needing to feed her baby daughter. It was a sensation she never wanted to feel again. Instinctively, she massaged the top of one of them, trying to ease the pressure.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Thedriel asked. He was watching her curiously.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She glanced down, and to her horror, a small patch of moisture had begun to darken the stretched cerise silk of her blouse. She hid it with her hand and tried to scramble to her feet, intending to escape to the bedroom to change, but the wine she had drunk had made her clumsy, far clumsier than she usually was after a glass and a half of decent wine.

  In an instant Thedriel had grasped her and had pulled her back onto the sofa. He was very close, and smelled of freshly cut hay.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured, stroking her hair away from her face. ‘Let’s see what the problem is.’

  Rachel was beyond humiliated. She tried to push his hand away as it delicately toyed with the top button of her blouse, but he had anticipated the move, neatly capturing her hand and holding it away with the other.

  ‘Stop it,’ she whispered, wondering why she did not feel more scared. He had obviously put something in the wine, yet his touch filled her with such an inner calm as she had never felt before.

  Her blouse was stretched tight over her breasts, which felt swollen and tender. Each button was dealt with efficiently and with minimal fuss, gradually exposing the aubergine lace brassiere which had inexplicably become two cup sizes smaller, or so it seemed.

  ‘They’re very sore,’ she said, as his fingers drifted over the tops of her breasts.

 
‘I know. I’m sorry,’ he soothed her, and bent his head to press a kiss to the nearest one. Instantly, it seemed, the feeling subsided a little, leaving a spreading patch of warmth that threatened to engulf her whole body. ‘I think I’ll have that drink now.’

  He peeled the blouse away and slipped the strap of her brassiere away from her shoulder. Her head fell back as she decided to just let him do what he wanted, as he pressed tiny kisses slowly, inexorably down towards her nipple, which she knew was distended and red as a raspberry. She tensed as his lips closed over it, anticipating the exquisite pain in those over-wrought nerve endings, and felt him tug gently at the hard little nub. The feeling was so exquisite, it transferred directly down her body, tiny arrows of pleasure pulsing over and over in time with the gentle pulling of her lips. Her back arched towards his mouth as her legs fell open, and soft little “oh” sounds dripped from her lips as he suckled from her.

  She had no idea how long it lasted. Eventually he moved to the other breast, testing its weight in his hand before lifting it to his lips. The unbelievable knowledge that he was drinking from her was totally irrelevant. She wanted him too much, wanted him to fill her up until she was overflowing. She ached to touch herself, to relieve that overpowering tension, but he was not letting her, holding her hand firmly out of reach. She could not stand it any more and twisted away from him, intent on pushing him back onto the sofa and ....