“You can’t sleep with Riona, Marc,” the master-of-the-obvious declared.
Marc limped to the sofa and collapsed. “Fuck, you think I don’t know that?” he shot back. “You think that painfully obvious fact hasn’t crossed my mind?”
Two hands in the air signaled a truce. “Take it easy. I just wanted to be sure we’re coming from the same place.”
Marc rolled his eyes. “Yeah, not from inside Riona.”
It wasn’t that the priest wasn’t above cracking the occasional sexually-themed joke. Dee had learned long ago to release his preconceptions about modesty and propriety where this man of God was concerned. But even this snide declaration hit him as a bit obtuse.
“So you’ve thought about it then?”
Marc’s hand slicked over his scalp. Dee really, really hoped the priest was planning on washing those hands before he touched anything.
“Thought about it, fantasized about it, dreamt about it. Never with intention. I think a lot about flying to the Caribbean on vacation too, but I ain’t never booked flights.”
“Yeah, but a trip down Jamaica way doesn’t end with you burning in Hell, or worse, managing its HR department.” Dee couldn’t let it go. He walked to the sink, grabbed a handful of paper towels from a rack mounted under the cabinets, and ran them under the tap turned all the way to H. “And Riona’s departure gates are a little more lax in their security, if you get my drift. We can’t let this go on. I refuse to see you damned while I still suck air.”
“You assume she’d be willing,” Marc said sarcastically as Dee played doting mother and dotted at his palms.
“Oh, believe me, when I suggested to her the reason you skedaddled was because Hermosa pricked your guilt about your feelings for her, the look on her face was anything but disgusted.”
“Really?” The priest’s face filled with light. “You think she’d really…. Wait, what am I saying?”
The demigod took Marc’s chin in the pinch of his fingers. “Look, bud. There’s nothing wrong with loving her, just as long as you don’t do anything with her. You… You do love her, right?”
The question hung in the air, until Marc’s face screwed up and his fist put a dent in the freezer door to match the one his foot had left below a few minutes before. “Fuck! Yes, but what’s the use? I know everyone’s into open relationships these days, but I don’t think she’s willing to share me with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Shit, how could I let this happen? How could I fall in love with someone? What kind of sick fuck am I?”
“The kind that loves every good soul more than he loves himself.” Dee walked Marc back to the sitting area and lowered him to the couch. “Look, I didn’t come over to lecture you. The gods know my history of fucked-up relationships and shortcomings could inspire a whole line of self-help books. But I can’t stand by and watch my best friend throw away his mortal soul and become my enemy because he lets temptation get a hold of him. Even if it’s because of his love for a woman as worthy as Riona. Just promise, Marc. Promise me you’re going to keep your shit together and not fuck this up.”
“Doin’ my best, Dee.” Marc’s eyes trained on the floor. “Doin’ my best.”
Chapter 15
Lucy’s hands were everywhere, like water washing over her. Both seemed to have a similar effect on the witch; Riona was wetter than rain and just as ready to fall down to the ground. Lucy kissed like a sinner, and moved her tongue like a snake charmer was directing it with his flute.
“Your place or mine?” the black-haired vixen asked with a devious smile as she back-stepped Riona from the elevator, keeping her fingers laced through the belt loops of Riona’s jeans.
It was only at that moment that Riona realized she had never even been inside her delectable date’s abode. Who was this vivacious vixen and where did she come from? Were the answers within? Likely, yes, but looking at Lucy’s goods would sidetrack her. She was so not interested in being rerouted at the moment. Riona was a shaken soda can of sexual frustration, and if someone didn’t pop her top soon, she was going to explode. Besides, Riona’s own apartment door was right in view, the first on the left from the elevator shaft.
“Mine,” she breathed before she wrapped her arms back around Lucy and brought their lips together again.
Despite possessing ivory skin as soft and velvety as crème fraiche, there was a bit of brawn mixed in with Lucy’s beauty. As soon as they reached Riona’s door, she placed her hands on Riona’s shoulders, pinned her against the entryway and started to yank down the witch’s leather jacket, before covering her mouth once more. Riona fought the urge to let her hands wander under Lucy’s shirt, and instead, tried to pull her keys from the purse hanging off her shoulder like a magician trying to pull a rabbit from his hat. She had just felt the cold sting of metal against her fingers when the disembodied voice of Joan Jett sang out through the silence of the hall.
Lucy stopped on a dime and rolled her eyes as she growled, “Fuck me.”
Riona’s tongue quickly darted out and licked Lucy’s bottom lip playfully. “Exactly what I’m planning.”
Lucy pulled out of their embrace, but tapped her index finger on Riona’s nose. “Hold that thought, you minx. This won’t take but a second.” She tapped the phone’s screen, then put it to her ear, barking “What?”
Hoping they would pick right up where they left off, Riona turned to the door with keys in hand as Lucy talked on behind her.
“Oh, he did, hey? And just how did he… Really? … And how the hell did the bastard get past security? … Ha! Looks like Little G’s still got some tricks up his sleeve he’s been holding out from me. Well, we can’t let that type of behavior go unchecked now, can we? We have to squash this and squash it now.”
Lucy’s commanding tone was only turning on Riona more. The otherwise straight-laced statistician would admit she wasn’t opposed to a little role-playing on occasion. Unbidden, a vision of Lucy in a black tie and business suit, barking out orders to Riona donned up in a low-dip cardigan and high-rise miniskirt, suddenly filled her mind’s eye.
Her balloon, however, went flaccid when she heard Lucy finish her conversation with a, “No, just keep him there. I’ll be right down. I want to handle this personally.”
Riona bit her bottom lip as she turned around, trying her best not to let the disappointment broadcast across her face. Was this really going to happen to her twice in the span of an hour? Getting worked up to the point of almost breaking, just to be left high and anything but dry?
“You have to go?”
Lucy’s eyes filled with shame. “I’m so sorry. But that annoying employee? The one I told you about at lunch? He’s pulling shenanigans again, and I have to take care of it in person before all hell breaks loose.”
Riona mocked understanding, curling up like a Shrinky Dink. “It’s cool. We all have to make a living, right?”
“Right.” Lucy slipped her cell back in her pocket before sliding her hand behind Riona’s neck and pulling her in. “Maybe a little something to look forward to in the meantime…”
The intensity of this kiss was a ten point five earthquake in what heretofore had been slight tremors. Riona’s arms circled around Lucy and held onto her like a life raft in a sea of desire, as the latter’s other hand pulled up to Riona’s chest and caressed the hidden treasure concealed under a white, cotton blouse. The witch’s breasts pebbled instantly, sending a reverberating shock through her extremities. Maybe at least a quickie, Riona hoped. All too soon, Lucy pulled back and turned.
“Come back over tonight,” Riona commanded as she saw Lucy disappear back into the elevator.
Lucy’s response, “Like you could keep me a…,” was cut off by the closing of the elevator shutting and the slow sink of the sliver of light between the doors.
Holy fish sticks.
Still breathless, Riona closed the door of her apartment behind her and fell against it, panting. Hints of her shot of Jerry and her Lucy chaser lingered on her lips. She could feel her insides pulse in remembrance of twin touches, each inducing an intolerable heat within her in a slightly different, but no less promising way. She couldn’t recall having been so utterly frustrated since college, when she pined over a blonde-haired Adonis on the swim team whose Speedos ended up on the floor of one of the other diver’s bedroom. The difference between her pimply-faced twenty something self and her crest-of-thirty doppelganger, however, was that Riona no longer let fate and other’s sexual orientation determine when she would or wouldn’t be satisfied. The only question was by whom, or in failure of that, by what. If Lucy had to go, it was a bummer, but not the end of the world. There were other ways to get to the place her body was aching to be.
She couldn’t recall dropping her purse on the dining table, kicking her shoes off in the middle of the living room, or stripping off her clothes at the side of her bed. The queen bed might be lonely with just one, but it still made the perfect landing pad for her nude figure.
Her suspicion was right, she was wetter than Miami in a hurricane. Her fingers nimbly found the most sensitive spot and took to arms. Images of Jerry’s borrowed, buff body interchanged with visions of Lucy’s pert breasts and pouty lips. Her hand worked in place of their attention, bringing her nearly to, but not quite able to arrive at, ultimate pleasure. Letting her other hand pinch at her nipples only served to mock her body. It was like being a person dying of thirst, who got thrown into a mountain stream with her mouth sewn shut.
Then, her mind’s eye shifted, conjuring up an image of brown, wavy hair and steel-black eyes, staring up at her from below as a sinfully-talented tongue licked at her, his stiff, starched collar brushing the inside of her thigh.
It was all she needed. In an instant, Riona crested, and couldn’t stop herself from calling out the name of her ghost-rider.
“Marc! Yes, yes, Marc! Maaaahhh…. ungh!”
She rode out the waves of bliss as the image melted from her consciousness and the warmth from her body. From heights to depths, the realization swept through her.
Marc.
Of all people, the only one she couldn’t have. How many times had she let that idea play out in her mind only to end at the same ultimate conclusion: there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell, and not just because he was a priest. No matter what Dee said, Riona didn’t see the so-called “feelings” the demigod claimed the man of the cloth held for her. Half the time, Marc was a complete ass, and the other half of the time, when he did trip over compassion, it was only for the purpose of advancing her understanding of magic so they were more successful in the battle against evil. Surely a man such as he, who had never tasted the pleasures of the flesh, couldn’t help but get all hot under the pressed, white collar with someone like her around. But that was just biology; it didn’t mean anything more than he was a certifiable, human male. And no matter what it was that was going on between them, Riona was in no way interested in reenacting The Thornbirds. That little tale certainly did not end well, and a relationship with Marc wouldn’t either.
With a devilish smile, her fingers ghosted over her breast and back towards her core.
Well, what she needed was only biological too. There was nothing wrong with daydreaming about a hot guy performing all sorts of unholy sacraments on her, even if he was a priest…
“Would… this… be a bad time for a visit?”
“Holy shit!”
Cars in the the Indy 500 didn’t achieve the speed with which Riona pulled her sheets up over her glistening body and slammed back against the headboard. Ramiel never claimed to be the perfect house guest, but he usually had the decency to show up while she was both clothed and non-post-orgasmic.
“I’m going to take that as a no.” Ramiel’s lips pursed as he used her dresser for a bench. “But since I’m already here, let’s just pretend you said yes and get on with it.”
“GET OUT!” she demanded, hurling a pillow his direction.
He caught it out of the air with ease, brandishing it before his body like a shield. “Why? It’s not like you have anything I haven’t seen thousands of times before. Think you’re so unlike the billions of other women through history? Please.”
“It’s not about my body, you ass!”
“No?” He rolled his silver eyes sarcastically. “Does it, by chance, have anything to do with a certain holy man’s name you were just calling out in the throes of passion?” Her cocked arm, this time loaded with an alarm clock, stilled. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is that a sensitive subject?”
“You heard that?” Riona dropped the clock back on the side table. Rubbing her temple as though there might be a reset button there, she grimaced. “It’s not what it sounds like, Ramiel. Marc and I … We don’t have anything going on between us. I was just frustrated and needed to let off some steam. And he’s kind of hot and I… Wait, why am I telling you this?”
Ramiel shrugged as he scooted off the edge of the dresser and landed noiselessly on the floor. “Oh, so it’s just a case of needing to let off some steam and his face was pretty? Well, Keystone, I was really hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but considering the alternative…”
Much to her surprise, the angel began working off his black tee over a body that had been crafted by the Almighty himself. As his jeans followed and the denim dropped to the floor, showing that, in the boxers-or-briefs debate, angels went with that famous third option of neither, Riona considered if perhaps that whole “ecstasy delivered by the Heavenly host” thing wasn’t a metaphor.
“No. No way.” Riona’s head resembled a water sprinkler on meth. “Besides, you told me you wouldn’t do that with me. Said it wasn’t my destiny.”
Like a lion, Ramiel strode from the other side of the room to her bed, before lowering himself to all fours at the end. She knew those wings of his were somewhere, but she couldn’t see them at the moment. Had never seen them actually. He always kept them hidden for reasons he’d never explain. It didn’t take wings, however, to realize his body was beyond human and pleasingly gifted.
“It’s not your destiny. But who said anything about this being more than just a quick roll in the sheets? And it doesn’t need to take long. I can take you over the edge and back in less than thirty seconds if you want. Or, if you’d prefer slow and steady, over and over until the cows come.”
“Home,” Riona quickly corrected as Ramiel’s hand closed over the edge of the sheet that covered her and began to try to pull it down. “The saying is, until the cows come home.”
“I know what I said, witch. Do you have any idea how long it takes a bull to get a heifer off?” He didn’t fight her for the sheet anymore, just crawled over her and settled his body over hers with the layer of cotton the only thing separating them. “Now, do you want to be divinely fucked or not? One rule though: You can’t call out for God, no matter what. It creates a very awkward situation for me when I go home.”
Despite the fact that she found her eyes sizing up his angelic endowment and trying to remember the laws of physics about whether or not Ramiel should be able to walk straight with something like that hanging from his body, her expression showed her hesitance. An archangel would, no doubt, be a great lay. But even if he gave her the greatest climax she’d ever felt, she’d still feel just as empty and hopeless after it was all done.
As she felt now.
“No.”
His hips stilled, ceasing the playful grinding that was already tempting her too much for her own good. “No?”
She sighed, knowing the temporary high wasn’t worth the long term low. “I’m sure it would be, that you’d be exceptional. I just can’t. I won’t.”
Without realizing they had moved, Riona suddenly found herself sitting in her liv
ing room. Ramiel, redressed without a wrinkle, sat on the adjacent arm chair, a cup of something steamy in his hands.
“Well, the good part, Keystone, is that you’re in love.” His hand shot up in the air and cut her off before she could even voice her retort. “Okay, not yet. But you will be.”
She feigned innocence.
“Fine, don’t admit it. It’s not like you weren’t just calling out his name like it would win you a cash prize.” Ramiel took a measured sip, and popped his palate on the outdraw. “I’m sure that’s only coincidence.”
“Not that I’m admitting anything…” She noticed he had dressed her as well with whatever angelic voodoo he used, and of course, the shirt he’d put her in had a neckline that plunged deeper than the stock market crash of 1929. “… but if I were to fall in love with Marc, why would that be any of your business?” She seemed to recall her words as her tone deadened from insulted to disturbed. “Wait, what’s the bad part?”
Ramiel grinned, relaxing back into the depth of the cushions. “Has Dee ever told you about Gaius Gallicus?”
She shook her head and narrowed her eyes.
“I think it’s time you heard. Gaius was a Pure Soul,” Ramiel began. “A Keystone, actually, like you. The power of the other two of his trinity, his two pillars, flowed through him, just like with you. They, my dear, defined the term ‘super bad ass geeks.’“
Riona scoffed, “I didn’t know that was a term.”
“Wasn’t, until them, because no one could have claimed the title.” Out of nothingness, Ramiel waved his hand and produced a twin to his mug, handing it to Riona. “Anyways, Gaius and his pillars were based out of Alexandria in the first century AD, and dedicated themselves to creating a compendium about Lucifer and all his forces. They traveled throughout the known world of that time, cataloguing every nasty, POS creature they encountered, experimenting with the limits of their magic, creating and refining new ways of vanquishing demons and other underworld scum. Gaius held the collection of these experiences and discoveries high above all in his life. He knew that such a resource would be a powerful weapon in the fight against Lucifer for centuries to come. Nothing distracted him from his work, nothing.”
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