by Jorja Tabu
JORJA TABU
All images and text Copyright 2013.
All rights reserved by the author. Unauthorized reproduction or works derived therein are impermissible under US Copyright law.
“So. You’re an angel.”
“Sure,” he said again, shrugging his sculpted shoulders as he took in the room. Mercedes tried desperately not to be swayed by the sensuous taunt of his musculature; she took another deep breath to keep her heart from racing merely from the flutter of his eyelashes, and desperately refocused on the task at hand...
Hands. Perfect, utterly perfect, tanned, masculine--Oh my lord, she thought, and shook her head. “What you really are,” she tried again, “is--”
“--Listen, Mercy--can I call you Mercy?” His blinding smile flashed over her desk, and she found herself gurgling a bit incoherently as he beamed directly at her. “It doesn’t really matter what I am, right? I’m just a guy. A regular guy, whatever else might be true. And all I need to know about is her. Whatever might be true about her.” He was leaning towards her and tapping a photo on the desk below while his smile hypnotized Mercedes from above. She blinked; his eyes were like emeralds. Real emeralds. Not that she’d ever seen emeralds, just that-- “What do you say? Sound like a plan?”
“What?” What plan?
“My true love,” he said, and in spite of the radiance of his smile, she could see he only had one dimple cradled in his golden cheek. It was somehow even more endearing than having two. “Let’s not worry about me. I know me. I’m worried about finding her.”
“You have an eternity to find her,” Mercy suddenly said, blinking again; the image of male perfection before her blurred as the knowledge rose to the surface of her mind, abrupt and resolute.
“Why?” A deepening line between his perfectly perfect brows cast a brief cloud over the image, his copper hair glinting as he leaned towards her again. The room grew very, very bright. Too bright. “What do you mean?”
“This woman, the one you’re looking for--you don’t think you can really love her,” Mercy whispered, the words rushing past her lips like a bubbling spring. She couldn’t even stop them, couldn’t pull them back inside of her open mouth with either her frozen hands or her lost intentions. Nothing about this was going as planned. “In fact, you didn’t really think you had a true love--you were looking for this particular woman, this young woman here, and you thought she was just.... She was just...” The room swayed in front of her. Everything grew strangely dim, the edges blurring and rubbing against each other; Mercy flattened her hands on her desk and panted. “You’re going to love her more than anything,” she hissed. “You’re going to love her more than living.”
And then the world went dark
“Don’t tell me this isn’t perfect,” the angel said softly, his green eyes glistening like the endless ocean before them. The light reflected differently from the unnatural orbs in his unnaturally perfect face, Mercy thought, and then realized this wasn’t, in fact, her thought. She was inside someone else. Listening to them think. Looking through their eyes into his, towards the ocean beyond.
She would have passed out, but she couldn’t. She was trapped in a wholly awake, wholly un-Mercy consciousness.
Holy shit, she thought. Then she heard the brain she was lurking in think this, and say it out loud in clipped tones: “I’m fucking sick of perfect, asshole. I would be perfectly thrilled to be back home in bed, listening to the rain and my grandma snore. It would be perfect not to be kidnapped by some jackass who claims to be an angel, and everyone else is calling a--”
“--Let’s not,” the angel said smoothly, but he looked different to Mercy through these new eyes; he was still outrageously handsome, although his buttery gold skin and vivid copper hair failed to make her breathless. He struck her as arrogant. Too composed, too expectant of her compliance with his wishes--whatever they may be. It enraged the body she was in.
“Oh,” the stranger’s voice said, dripping with sarcasm, “let’s.” Mercedes grew dizzy for a second as the stranger swiftly moved towards him, a thin brown finger jabbing at his hairless chest. “Demon. Evil. Will-snatch-up-your-ass-andyoursoul. Are you trying to tell me every single person in the room was wrong? You’re just misunderstood?”
A flicker of rage appeared in the corners of those lovely green eyes, and then vanished. “Not exactly.”
“Now that’s perfect,” the stranger snapped. “I’m sure if I gave a shit those vague, insinuating answers would seem charming. But I don’t, and they don’t. So when do we get off of this goddamn island, and get me back home?” Mercy tried to pay attention for a moment to the body she was in; it was difficult, but she could tell that those thin fingers were now tucked tightly into fists, balled by her sides. She was muscled, fret with tension, heavy in the hips and thighs; when she swung her head lush curls scattered across the edges of her vision. Not ringlets, exactly, though perhaps they would be if she stayed on this beach much longer. She was wearing a long tube dress of knitted fabric, and some old school Reebok sneakers.
She was young. Very young--twenty two? Twenty three?
And pissed. Very, very pissed.
This was no ordinary rage, Mercedes realized; the sea began to darken behind the handsome man before her, a tangle of black seeping up from the horizon and staining the sky as a storm swung their way out of nowhere. In seconds, the sun was obliterated by unfriendly clouds. The pair of them faced off on the beach, the white sand now grim and bland underneath the coming onslaught of the dark. The angel--or demon, whatever he may be--twisted his neck to take in the sudden change in the weather, then turned back towards the stranger as Mercedes tried to read his eyes. In the changing light, they were even more ethereal, glimmering of their own accord, without any help from the sunlight. He arched a regal eyebrow.
“You could probably go whenever you wanted,” he said softly, looking at her. The pretense of detached calm was gone; in its place was a wary sort of interest, the kind someone much older than he seemed might pay a youngster that has proven their novelty in a surprising way. In fact, he seemed surprised to be surprised. “I don’t think I could keep you here.”
“How?” Mercy’s vision blurred as the stranger blew an exasperated breath at the darkening sky and swung her head back down with dizzying speed. “Magic?”
“If you want to call it that,” he said, watching her. “Some do.”
“Sorry,” the stranger growled, “I’m actually not a demon. So I can’t just whisk people to and fro. Can’t even kidnap myself, thanks. So help me out, and take me home.”
“If that was where you wanted to go,” he told her, shrugging, “we’d already be there.” And with that, he turned his back towards her and started slowly trudging across the sand.
“You bitch!” Fury ripped through the stranger’s body; Mercedes felt intoxicated, weightless with the waves of rage pulsating through the thin frame as she galloped across the sand. Fat rain drops pelted her from above as lightning sizzled down and kissed the ocean. Just as she lurched into the angel, he spun to face her.
“You’ve got to calm down,” he said, and the ripple of menace in his voice struck Mercedes like an arrow. That was the problem--beneath the beauty, beneath the calm, striking polish, beneath the angel... Was something dangerous. Maybe he really was a demon. His brilliant green eyes narrowed as the stranger threw a punch and he dodged it, the thin fist sinking into the air over his shoulder. Thunder billowed across the charging ocean towards them, hellacious winds whipping the stranger’s curls into a frenzy.
“Take me home,” the strange girl yelled, infuriated. She threw another punch; she didn’t hit like a girl. She swung like a boxer. He deftly ducked her blows; the sky was
rollocking frantically, purple and black with an endless, hungry thunder. “Take! Me! Home!”
“Just go,” he whispered, his voice strangely audible in spite of the crashing echos of ocean and sky and the supernaturally fast pummeling, ducking, and diving, of their bodies dancing on the shifting sand as she swung at him. The water began swallowing the strip of beach but somehow never touched their legs. “Just go, Lila. Go home.”
And then, just like that, it was over.
The pair stood, panting, in front of a dark, old house, isolated on the edge of a thick wood. Crickets chirped softly in the twilight, and Mercedes could hear the low rush of a river somewhere out of sight. The rickety old house was strangely beautiful, covered in graceful eruptions of blooming flowers that were home to a thousand sleepy birds and dragonflies, littered with the kind of debris a long, rewarding life might have--an old quilt tossed over a wooden rocking chair, a stack of whittled animals gazing out at them from a heavy basket. Smoke arced from the chimney; everything smelled like summer, and grilled cheese sandwiches, and dark, potent earth. Everything around them was quietly, vividly, achingly alive.
“How did we get here?” The girl was frightened. Mercedes felt the rage seep out of her instantly at the sight of the weather-beaten house, right through her Reeboks and into the dirt. She felt the clamp of terror at the base of her spine, the shuddering realization that something--magic, he’d said--had happened. The nape of the stranger’s neck prickled with harrowing acknowledgement. She had happened.
“I think you know,” he said, his voice once again strangely distinct in spite of its softness. When he spoke, other sounds grew quiet and listened as if waiting for permission. The girl tilted her head and looked at him, blinking rapidly. The violet sky waited above them.
“I don’t,” she said, and her lip trembled. Mercy felt pity for her, in spite of the now cooling destruction she’d witness moments before. She really was young. “I don’t know, and I’m afraid--”
“--Hush now,” he said, rolling his shoulders and glancing at her with an amused smirk. “Afraid? Of what? Yourself?”
The girl was silent. The crickets grew still, the sky frozen above, smoke wavering in the half light.
The man’s smirk dimmed as he watched her. “Yes. Well then, perhaps you should be. But then again, maybe not--you stopped the storm, I hope, rather than letting it rampage across the globe. And it’s not as if you started a malaria epidemic, or assassinated the president--you just wanted to go home. So you went.”
“But how?” The girl tightened her fists again, despair threading through the reluctance and confusion. Mercy wished she could give her a hug. “How did we get here--how did we even get there?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t make either choice, actually,” he said, calmly taking her in. His eyes glinted in the half-dark. “If it were up to me, I would at least have put some shelter on that strip of sand...Maybe a few dozen bottles of the finest rum, a nice fire to lay by, and a big, welcoming bed--”
“--Shut up!” The girl had a flash of a tantrum, her frustration snapping them both out of the quiet; in the distance, lightning appeared. Mercedes realized the river was actually right behind the ramshackle house; it’s front faced the moist, fertile earth where they stood, but long stalks supported it as it stood out over the sliding water. Thick greenery hung over the banks opposite, and an owl hooted somewhere in the shadows.
“I’m just saying,” the angel muttered, brushing something off of his impeccable shoulder. “This is hardly romantic.”
“Romantic?” The girl’s heart picked up speed; Mercedes was afraid first, and then felt the girl become afraid as another flicker of lightning appeared far over the branches on the shore. Slow, deliberate breaths quieted the building tension inside the girl’s body as she glared at the angel.
“Well.” He said, meeting her gaze matter-of-factly. “That was certainly my intent.”
“Not kidnapping?”
“That was just a bonus. I didn’t really have to kidnap you,” he said smugly, unbuttoning his shirt and looking back at the old house. A light came on, somewhere inside. “In fact, I believe you kidnapped me. If we’re being technical. Shouldn’t we go inside?” He began to walk towards the front door of the house without a backward glance. “I hate to be rude, and I know your grandmother can probably hear every word we--”
There was no warning. Just as suddenly as they’d arrived at her grandmother’s house, they were standing back on the beach. The moon was bright overhead, but the sun’s final rays kept it from dominating the sky; the colors, warm and cool, warred in heated flashes over the ocean’s evolving surface. The angel stood, quietly watching, his unbuttoned shirt in hand. “Nevermind then,” he said, and took a step towards the surf.
He’d known all along what she would do. The manipulation was clear to Mercedes, and she felt it become clear to the girl. “You bitch!” She called again, running after him, but this time he took flight and scrambled into the water just as she crashed into the surf. His smile was just as electric as his eyes; Mercedes felt a wave of desire course through the stranger as she gave chase, her body smashing into the surf as she dove into the path he cut through the water. It didn’t feel right, wearing someone else’s wishes. It felt uncomfortable, and even worse than thinking their thoughts--but there was nothing she could do. As much as Mercedes might want to get away, she couldn’t, and as much as the girl might want to simply hate the angel and be done with him, she clearly couldn’t do that either. Who knows what had happened between them up until this point? Who knows what their riddles meant, who kidnapped who, where they were, how the girl kept picking them up and plopping them down where-ever she pleased? And who was she, anyway?
Delilah. Mercedes felt the stranger’s heart pick up speed as the angel dipped and dove ahead of her in the last rays of sunlight, his body sparkling, his smile finally real. She felt the ambivalent mixture of resentment and lust in the girl; she felt a strong tug for someone else--something else--but then a rush of resistance, and more wishing. I am young, dammit the girl thought, pleading with herself. I want to enjoy myself. I want to enjoy this. With him.
She didn’t have a boyfriend somewhere that the coppery vision was luring her from. A shadowy figure rose in her thoughts, but the girl shoved it away; he wasn’t expecting anything, this particular shadow, and Delilah wished she didn’t either. Mercedes could tell, in the way her heart felt and the way she dreamily halted, staring, as the angel did the same, that the girl belonged only to herself. She was not being unfaithful as her fingertips crested on his bare shoulders and went sliding along the salt on his skin, their touch melding instantly into one, vibrant sensation. She wasn’t being disloyal to anything but herself, Mercy saw, and desperately willed the girl to think harder, to wait, to run back out of the surf and to her grandmother’s sweet-scented home by the river. To continue to be young. But instead the stranger grew still, rocked by the waves, and waited.
The angel’s hands found her hips. He was taller than her, his face strangely young with old eyes beneath the bright moon. “Romance,” he whispered.
“Just kiss me, asshole,” the stranger whispered back, and he grinned shamelessly, his hands wrapping tight around her waist, and pulled her near.
“Where?” He said, and cocked an eyebrow. The stranger rolled her eyes. He laughed, a glorious, mischievous sound. “How?” His lips came dangerously close to her own, their breath mingling with the scent of the sea. “With magic?”
His lips landed just to the left of her mouth. Delilah almost grew impatient, almost turned, pouting, confused, until the next soft kiss landed higher on her cheek, and then another lower, crept towards her jaw. The strong, lithe fingers Mercy had so admired grew more insistent, teasing her as the water swept the pair of them up and back; a hot, wet kiss landed on the girl’s throat as a wave tipped her up and into his palms, and then, all at once, his burning lips were firmly latched to hers, his fingertips achingly close to her core. She
twisted in his grasp, but he pulled her tighter. The waves rocked them again, and as she slammed into him, she felt his body hard below her and an accompanying rush of excitement. Delilah gasped, her back arching, and he squeezed her hips and bit her shoulder, pressing himself into the welcome heat of her slit. The long tube dress she’d worn was heavy in the water; he ripped it off. The linen pants he’d been lounging around in during their fight went the same way, and then there they were, stark naked in the sea, desperately hungry for each other.
“The bed, darling,” he purred, holding her away from himself and looking over her appreciatively. “Why waste it?”
So they didn’t.
Delilah blinked, and then there they were, side by side, naked on velvet with the stars above. He rolled over to face her, and she realized there was a bonfire about twenty feet away; the light flickered in his green eyes. “You’re so lovely,” he said, once again sounding surprised. “And so damn innocent. Are you sure this is what you want to be doing right now?”
“From everything you’ve told me, if I wasn’t we wouldn’t,” she said, hurt flashing in her chest. She was young, but she wasn’t that damn young. Delilah sat up and crossed her arms. “If you’ve got somewhere better to be--”
“--There is nowhere better, darling,” he whispered, his customary smirk returning as he noticed her miffed feelings. His light chuckle infuriated her. “There is nothing better. Point of fact.” His expression grew suddenly more guarded, half visible in the dim light. “But...I just wanted to be sure.”
“Very romantic,” muttered Delilah. He smiled and placed a single fiery fingertip on her cheek.
“Indeed,” he whispered. “It must be magic.” She didn’t even notice his other hand until it was already sliding under her hip, and when he was suddenly on top of her, the ember hot tip of his cock gliding along the faultline of her body, all she could do was shudder. He kissed her again--softly, his lips returning to taste her cheek, teasing her as she gasped, licking her throat--and slipped his tongue inside of her mouth at the same time he pushed past the folds of her mound. Delilah cried out as she felt him, the sound tearing her away from his kiss. He rolled his hips, sinking deeper inside of her, and groaned softly in her hair. Delilah felt him withdraw, then join their bodies at the crux with a firm thrust, and her own constricted with a wave of pleasure around his shaft, shuddering as he retreated. The pattern repeated, the sound of the ocean behind them; the angel matched its power as he sank inside of the girl’s silken center over and over, making her ripple with a slow, creeping ecstasy. He seemed to be able to anticipate her every need, bringing her close and then ebbing her away from the edge for what seemed like an eternity.