by Anne Conley
She still throbbed with pleasure from the climaxes she’d already had, but as his hands moved across her skin, her body hummed for more. She arched into his touches as her mouth clamored for his kiss. Damien owned her mouth, kissing her thoroughly before moving down her neck, branding her skin with his heated kisses.
Taking a nipple into her mouth, he moaned his approval as she writhed underneath him, feelings and sensations and emotions roiling through her. She wanted more, but it was all too much. She couldn’t let him stop.
He nibbled, suckled, and finally bit her nipple, leaving her gasping for air as he soothed it with his tongue before moving over to the other breast. His fingers touched her everywhere, roaming her body as if they didn’t know where to land, tickling her skin with caresses.
When Damien pushed inside this time, her body welcomed the invasion. As he distracted her with his kisses, he slid in, filling her with sweet sensation of fullness. Chest to chest, their skin scraped against each other deliciously, heating her outside with a smooth warmth she couldn’t begin to describe. Still kissing her, Damien made her feel desired. No—more than that. He made her feel needed.
As he kissed her, as he moved over her, inside her, Cynthia was overwhelmed by the sensations. It all felt so good, so perfect on her hypersensitive skin. She no longer cared if she didn’t have a future with Damien, she had right now.
As she climbed higher, Cynthia urged Damien on, hoping he felt some of what she was feeling. She didn’t know how to impart what she was thinking to him, wasn’t even sure if she could put it into words herself, she just knew she didn’t want it to stop.
He continued his murmuring in her ear, this time instead of surprised curses, he whispered words of love, mutterings of disbelief—how she made him feel, how together as one they were, how everything was perfect.
“Oh God…” she rasped, but once the floodgates opened, she couldn’t stop her utterings. “Oh God… Oh God… Oh God… OhGodOhGodOhGod…”
When she climbed the pinnacle, Damien pulled himself out, thrusting in just the tip of himself, hitting a spot just inside her that was so delicious, so perfect, so mind-numbing. Her eyes flew open to see Damien staring at her, his intense black eyes a mixture of awe, desire, and something more.
Something she felt, too, but was terrified to name. She couldn’t name it now, not when she was slated to possibly die tomorrow and say goodbye to all this. Earlier, she’d acknowledged to herself that she loved the man, but this was something even deeper than that. She didn’t want to ever be separated from him again.
“Come on, baby…” Damien encouraged her to fly apart one more time, his own self-restraint holding on by a tiny thread. When Cynthia crashed down into an oblivion of pleasure, he thrust himself in fully, once more, seated completely, and she felt his seed flow inside her in jets of warmth while she saw only white sparks in her peripheral vision, accompanied by a limp weightlessness.
Damien rolled over, cradling her once again in his embrace as their legs tangled together. Still too limp to move, she nestled into his arms, sated and happy, desperately trying to catch her breath.
She felt safe in Damien’s arms. Safe in a way she’d never craved, safe in a way she’d never thought possible with this man who gave off the dangerous vibes. She was cherished, needed. And it was a feeling that couldn’t be replicated. She knew that now.
Her dreams changed that night; Damien was in them this time. She didn’t know how she knew that, since she couldn’t see any faces, but she just knew. It was like when she dreamed of her childhood home, only in her dream it was completely different from her reality, but she knew it was her home.
She was someplace dark. There was no definition to anything, just darkness. In the distance, she could see incandescent light, brighter than burning magnesium, coming closer. It was an elongated shape, with vaguely humanoid outlines, but she couldn’t be sure. The closer it came, the harder her heart pounded. This light didn’t like her, resented her somehow, but she didn’t know why.
That wasn’t Damien, though. Damien came in the shape of darkness, blocking out the light. His intentions were clear to her, even though she couldn’t read his features. He was protecting her from the incandescence coming toward her, blocking her from its trajectory. At first, Damien was a dark, elongated shape, like the light, with arms and legs she could see against the other. But soon enough, enormous wings spread from his back—giant, protective blockades to keep the light from reaching her.
She sighed back into slumber, content that Damien would protect her from anything. After tonight, she belonged to him. She was safe.
When Damien walked Cynthia into the hospital the next morning, she was a wreck. He could see it in the way she twisted her fingers in the strap of her overnight bag, the jiggle of her dainty knee, the set of her mouth. Wanting to alleviate her nerves, he did the only thing he knew to do. He kissed her
Pulling her into him, he lowered his head until it was an inch from hers and said, “Don’t worry. Medicine has come a long way. At least they’re not draining your blood to get rid of the tumor, like they did in the sixteenth century.” Hardly something romantic to say, he knew, but he was going for humor, dark as it was, hitting her logical mind as best he could.
It seemed to work, since she tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled him toward her for the kiss. As their lips met, Damien was swept into his own head, trying to pigeon hole this sensation into a place where it made sense.
He’d been created to deceive believers, to find the non-believers, and he’d gotten some sort of joy from the job. In fact, he wasn’t created to feel anything, but he’d definitely gotten some sense of satisfaction from his work. So much so, that he’d been cast down for getting carried away with himself. After that, he’d spent thousands of years preying on people’s misery, fouling things up for the good of the Earth, finding his own sense of joy in foiling The Boss’ plans. But the joy and satisfaction he’d received had been child-like compared to the last twelve hours.
As he kissed Cyn, her tiny, warm tongue slipping into his mouth, her teeth nibbling on his lips, suckling on his tongue. He tasted her. She tasted of summer and warmth. She took him to another plane altogether. If he’d gotten joy from his previous assignments, it was an immature, one-dimensional joy. Cyn gave him a pleasure so multi-faceted, so mature in its intensity, he couldn’t wrap his feeble head around it.
It was so overwhelming he didn’t notice the tiny tingle at the base of his skull, the sensation he should have been more open to, the sensation of fear. He was too wrapped up in Cynthia and her kiss.
Damien pulled her tighter against his body, feeling her petite curves under his fingers. He was oblivious to his surroundings, and instead relished the curve of her backside while she clenched his biceps. She was trembling in his arms, and at first he thought it was remnants of last night’s passions. After the first time they’d made love, animalistic and needy, he’d slowed himself down and managed to savor the experience, delighting in her reactions to his touches and kisses. He’d actually made love to her, a new thing for him, and something he planned to do a lot more of.
But when something slipped into the edge of his mouth during their kiss, he realized the warm saltiness was her tear.
Damien broke the kiss and rested his forehead on hers, trying to stare beyond her eyes, to her motivations behind the tears. But she was closed off, as she usually got when the operation came up.
“Why the tears, Cyn?” He wanted to shake her to get the truth but knew she wouldn’t give it. He’d told her he loved her last night and meant it. But she hadn’t returned the sentiment, even though he knew she felt it, too.
“I don’t want this to be goodbye,” she said simply, but her breath hitched in her throat, and the tears were still spilling out of her eyes as she lowered them in resignation.
He cradled her face, using the pads of his thumbs to wipe the tears away. “It’s not. He wouldn’t take you away from me now.” But with her
tiny words, she planted the seed of doubt in the primal part of his brain, the doubt he’d used against human-kind for an eternity, the doubt which would grow and morph into fear and anger—all of the emotions he’d once thrived on. But they would soon destroy him.
A throat cleared behind them. “Ms. Peterson? We’re ready to take you back now.”
Damien laid one more fierce kiss on her before letting her go. He watched her follow the young man through the swinging double doors marked for surgery and dropped himself into a chair to wait. That was when he finally noticed the niggling sense of fear in the back of his head.
The longer he sat there, the more he noticed it, the bigger it got, until the tingling had spread from the back of his neck to his chest, down to his stomach, and then across his extremities, effectively paralyzing him.
The Boss wouldn’t do it, would he? He’d promised Damien he could have what his brothers had. He could have a woman, someone good, to spend the rest of his life with. He’d found her, just like Uri, Rafe, Gabe, and Michael had. He wouldn’t make her die now, would he?
Damien cloaked himself in the waiting room, not wanting to leave, but uncomfortable with the new emotions rapidly spreading through him. Remorse filled him. That had to be what this was right now. He’d capitalized on others’ fears for so long that now that he felt the debilitating sensation for himself, he couldn’t believe how he’d made it worse for so many. But he had.
These new feelings terrified him—a paralyzing fear that turned his blood to lead, making him feel so heavy. He’d known this would happen. He’d watched it with his brothers, but actually feeling was chilling him. The remorse, the fear, wanting to make her feel happy and secure—those all went against his reason for creation, every fiber of his being was programmed to feel other things. This was so… new.
After about an hour, Evelyn came in, looking nothing short of haggard, followed by an older couple. Damien immediately recognized them as Cynthia’s parents. The man looked like a giant leprechaun, over six feet tall, with flaming red hair and piercing green eyes, eyes that were currently filled to capacity with fear and sadness, emotions with which Damien was quickly becoming acquainted. Her mother was a diminutive woman with dark hair and blue eyes, but she was obviously the power house of the couple.
Her eyes scanned the waiting area, and she turned to Evelyn, who looked more and more like a chastised puppy.
“We’re too late. She’s already gone in.” She expelled a heavy sigh, one that filled the air around her with grief. Her fear was masked by the anger she tossed at Cynthia’s friend. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”
The man was staring out a window, his hands shoved into his pockets, his broad shoulders tense. “Because it wasn’t her place to tell us. Cynthia should have and chose not to.” He spoke quietly, but the emotion behind his words was intense.
“I tried to get her to tell you guys, but she didn’t want you to worry needlessly. Her decision was made, and she knew y’all would try to talk her out of it.”
The man sighed and dropped into a chair, elbows on his knees, holding his hair in his hands. He was silent.
The woman started pacing. “Of course we’d worry. That’s our job as parents. She can’t take that away from us.”
Evelyn tried to hug the woman but was shrugged away, so she sat next to the man. Damien couldn’t watch anymore. He understood the parents’ point of view, but respected and applauded Evelyn for conforming to Cynthia’s wishes. He didn’t want to watch them battle it out. At some place in his existence, he would have loved watching the family dynamics; Evelyn was obviously an old friend, and now she was in hot water with the parents. The discomfort floating around the room would have given him endless amounts of joy—a simplistic, shallow, heartless joy.
Now it just made him feel like his stomach was turning inside out.
He managed to find the hospital room where Cynthia would be when she came out of surgery—a quiet place to wait. Cloaking himself, he sat in the corner, and that’s what he did. He waited.
And waited.
The sterile environment wasn’t really helping the fear which was doing its best to overcome him, so he closed his eyes and tried to go someplace that used to calm him, but he hadn’t visited in a while…
The cave initially had been red, blood-red, but had an aged patina in it now, one of a grayish black. It was dark and full of nooks and crannies only he and a handful of his oldest cohorts really explored anymore. The shrieks of the damned filled his ears, and where it used to soothe him and bring him the joy he craved, the sounds now were more shrill than anything else.
This was Hell, the place to which he’d been cast down millennia ago, the one he’d used for his happy place since the cave had been created for his exile. This was supposed to be home, and while it was familiar, it wasn’t comforting him at all.
He could remember the exact time period when things had shifted for him, when he went from enjoying his place in the grand scheme to wanting more: The Salem Witch Trials.
Most recently touted as America’s largest instance of mass hysteria, he didn’t even get credit for his part in the episode. Although, that was when the first stirrings of something akin to guilt had made itself known to Damien. He didn’t feel guilty about it, not really. But it was a tangible reminder of what he used to be and how he didn’t want to be that anymore. In the centuries since then, he’d tried to turn his back on it but couldn’t.
Popular culture had used the word ‘evil’ to describe him, but most of the things attributed to Damien were humankind at its worst. There was no competing with that. Or Azazel.
Movies of this century that depicted possessions based on accountings of ‘true stories’ were mostly the fault of the demon who had escaped for a brief period. The Exorcist, Amityville Horror, The Entity, poor Emily Rose, those had all been Azazel. Not him. Azazel had been his predecessor until he’d gone too far, and the Boss had cast Damien down to take his place. Damien had holed Azazel up in his walls for eternity, but some idiot had broken the barriers he’d erected and summoned the demon, unleashing evil on the world that was entirely blamed on Damien.
Damien had spent his existence doing His will, tricking the humans into damnation like he’d been created to do, balancing out the good of Him in the world. But the witch trials had made him see a futility in his actions. See, he’d only convinced one woman to do his bidding. One lonely, bored woman. And he’d damned twenty to horrific deaths because of one woman.
Most of the ‘evil’ since then had been the work of honest depravity, greed, or mental illness. Or in some cases, a combination of them. He was a redundancy.
As his thoughts meandered around, he realized he’d enjoyed some of it. The ones who’d damned themselves, he’d enjoyed torturing, making them suffer.
As he looked around, seeing the faces he’d put into the walls looking back at him, he saw the torment there and felt the guilt. Now that he’d experienced the other side of things, he couldn’t see why he’d ever felt at home here.
He now found it all distasteful. He wanted a life with Cyn. His Cyn. Surely He wouldn’t take her away, not now when Damien had just found her. He imagined things with her he’d never allowed himself to imagine before. And it felt good. A lightness rose in him, a weightlessness. The brightness of hope.
Damien felt a small tug at the base of his spine, one telling him to go back to the hospital room, so he did. Cynthia was being rolled back in on a gurney. Her head was bandaged, and she looked grayish. Using all the restraint he possessed, he allowed the nurses to fiddle with her, making her more comfortable in her unconsciousness before leaving her alone. Damien watched the monitors, not knowing a single thing about the faint beeps they made, only knowing that if each beep was her heartbeat, it was agonizingly slow.
He stood and walked over to her, clutching her hand in his. It was cooler than usual but not alarmingly so. He watched the pulse in her neck, ascertaining it matched the beeps. He tried everything
he could to wake her up, but also knew remnants of anesthesia still pumped through her system and would have to wear off before she woke up completely.
He could only wait some more. This was hell. There was nothing he could have ever done that would be worse than this.
Then the beeping stopped and all hell broke loose.
Damien hovered over everyone, unwilling to be pushed into the corner again as they worked on her—injecting his Cynthia with things, pounding on her chest, using paddles full of electricity—only to consult her computerized chart and give up. It took several minutes but seemed to Damien that it was only a flash of time.
“She’s got a DNR, let’s call it.”
Familiar fury surged through Damien. Fury with his loss, and with The Boss, his Father, and the brothers that he suspected had a hand in this. Of course they did. They’d already invaded her dreams, kidnapped her, and tried to sway her away from him. Why wouldn’t they do this?
With a roar, he left for the confrontation of his life.
Cynthia had never felt hopeful for a relationship before, not since high school romances. Last night with Damien had given her an optimism for her future she wasn’t accustomed to. And it frightened her. For the first time, she had hope the surgery would go well. She’d never let herself feel that hope, focusing instead on the likelihood she would die so she wouldn’t be disappointed.
But even though last night with Damien had opened a new door for her—a couple new doors, if she were honest with herself—she still felt anxious about something. Like the other shoe was about to drop.
Maybe it was death. Her subconscious mind was surely keeping her from getting her hopes up in the eventuality of her death.
Not that she would be aware.
She’d spent countless hours contemplating her death—what it would be like—and had convinced herself it would be a lack of anything. Maybe a dim awareness as she floated around in the cosmic soup, a bodiless energy mass dissolving into nothingness, but that would be the most it could be. At the least, she would just not be anymore.