I look to the gorgeous god beside me who I’ve somehow tricked into wanting only me. “No, I’ll be changing it.” My heart pinches with grief as I say those words.
“Skyla”—Gage leans in close, the thick scent of his cologne ignites an inferno in me without even trying—“it’s okay if you want to keep it. I promise I don’t mind.”
“I want to be Mrs. Gage Oliver.” My lips tingle as I say it, and my stomach clenches with grief because, for the smallest window of time, I was Mrs. Logan Oliver. Not that there’s any state record, but there’s a heavenly record, and, at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters. “This is about you and me.” I push the words out like pushing a body off the side of Devil’s Peak—the body, of course, being my short marriage to Logan. Even if death had already nailed that coffin shut, I still hold him in my heart as my husband. Then my mother’s words come back to me—there’s room in your heart to love more than one person, and, she’s right, it’s a beautiful thing.
I swallow hard as I turn to the judge. “Skyla Oliver is what I want.”
“Very well.” He makes a note of it and proceeds while the petite woman who let us in acts as our witness. “We are gathered here for the wedding of Skyla Messenger and Gage Oliver.” He presses into me with that same familiar smirk I’ve seen on the back of the one hundred dollar bill—Benjamin Franklin’s own brand of righteous judgment mixed with disappointment. My father never showed so much as an ounce of disappointment in me, so there’s that. “Are you, Skyla, here under your own free will?”
“Yes.” I spastically nod into both him and Gage. “God, yes,” I give a nervous laugh. “I mean this isn’t a hostage situation if that’s what you’re getting at.” Crap, did I just say that out loud? “I totally trust Gage. He’s my best friend. It’s not like I just met him at some frat party. We’ve known each other for about two years now. He’s my soul mate. He’s had these really vivid dreams about me for a very long time.” I touch my fingers to my lips in an effort to stop the verbal diarrhea. God. “I mean, they’re not erotic or anything.”
The judge holds his palm to me, and I swallow down the rest of the uncalled for babble ready to spew from my lips.
Great. Bring up hostage situations and wet dreams. What’s next? Clown Fems?
“And you, Gage?” He threads his pen through his fingers as if he were bored. “Free will? Or should I place a call to the hostage negotiation team?”
Nice. I scowl at him for a moment. It looks like the only clown around here is seated right in front of us. At least there’s not a Fem for miles.
“There’s no place I’d rather be.” Gage gives my hand a squeeze. I mean it.
“Ms. Messenger—” The judge drawls it out with a slight country twang, and I sop it up to the dregs. There it was, the very last time I will ever hear anyone call me by that name, well, outside of Marshall, and legally speaking. It’s as if I’m inching toward a very steep cliff and the time has come for me to gracefully swan dive into a whole new world. It’s coming—the plunge—the moment I’m torn from my father forever, and I feel anything but graceful about it. Mia changed her name a while back, and my mother did the day she married Tad. It was just me who was left carrying the banner of my father’s love, and now, I’m surrendering it to the wind, to blow around futile and crash to the ground—turning to dust like my father himself. Demetri may have killed him, but I’m the one ending any hope of a Messenger lineage.
“Do you, Skyla, take Gage to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
My chest blooms with heat. An entire firework factory goes off inside me, singeing me, making me want to scream with joy and the slight surprise of sadness.
This is it—goodbye Skyla Messenger, forever. But it’s a beautiful hello, one I wouldn’t trade for a thousand letters that hold the memory of the past. Gage Oliver is my future, and that’s the only place I want to be.
I take a hold of his hands and get lost in the deep ocean of his eyes. “Yes—I do.”
“Do you, Gage, take Skyla to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do.” His eyes widen into mine. A smile brims on his lips.
The judge glances around the empty courtroom. “Is there anyone here who objects to these two getting married?”
The windows rattle as the rain increases with intensity. Lightning goes off, dripping from the sky like frayed tendrils, and in that instant the reflection of a man fills in the watery windowpane. He disappears as quick as he came, but I know that face, those hauntingly familiar eyes, and my heart claps to a stop. It was my father. His eyes were wide, his face pale with shock.
I shake the image away. Clearly, I was experiencing a momentary delusion. My dad loves Gage. He would’ve given me away if he could have—just the way he did the first time with Logan. He was all smiles and watery eyes that night at the Falls of Virtue, and so was I. In fact, he’s probably smiling down on me right now.
I turn my attention back to the judge, but my father’s shocked expression resonates in my mind like a bell long after it rang.
“Don’t worry, kids”—the judge frowns in his boredom—“the weather objects to everything around here.”
We share a quiet laugh.
“I’d like for you each to say a brief vow to one another—a promise if you will.” He checks his watch. “Try to boil it down to a few nouns and verbs. Think hashtag.”
I take a breath and nod into Gage. “I promise—” I bear my gaze into his, and something stirs between us. My vision floods with tears. I can’t control it anymore as the tears run freely down my cheeks. If one day I had to trace back to the very moment our souls fused together it would be now. The fabric of our beings, of our spirits are being knit together, woven so tight you can no longer separate us without tearing us apart, leaving us jagged and damaged. But we will remain whole. I will make sure of that. “Gage, when I was a little girl, I dreamed of the kind of man I would marry. I imagined him tall, dark, and handsome—and that you are. I imagined he would have a kind heart, gentle, hypnotic eyes, and a generous soul that would do whatever it takes to help those in need. And here you are, out of my dreams and into my life.” I sniff back tears. “Gage, I promise to be devoted to you and only you. I will do everything in my power to prolong our time together so that we may both step into eternity, hand in hand, when we’re old and grey.” There it is—a promise—a covenant. Death may have stung Logan and me, but it isn’t welcome to destroy my heart once again. “I love you. And I’m going to live to make you happy, to support you each and every day because you mean everything to me—much more than words can ever say. I’m so honored to be your wife, Gage. Thank you for loving me. I plan on spending the rest of my life, loving you madly.”
“Skyla.” He winces with a touch of heartbreak in his eyes. “Each day with you is a blessing. From the moment you came into my life, every day has been brighter, every moment another reason to live. You have redefined love for me and made it that much more than I ever dreamed it could be. I look forward to our future together. I want to be the person you can always count on to take care of you, and to love you now and forever more. I promise, from this day on, to make our each and every moment count. I will never take for granted my time with you. My love for you is unconditional—ceaseless—without end. I will do everything in my power to bring you joy, be your helpmate, to love you with all my heart. You are my everything—my heart’s desire. With you, Skyla, I already have it all.” Gage lifts my left hand and kisses the ring he placed on my finger earlier. His words swirl through my mind like flowers around a maypole, like butterflies and warm tropical breezes.
The judge clears his throat and offers a short-lived smile. “I now pronounce you, man and wife.”
Gage takes in a breath that expands his chest as wide as the world. I step into him, my hair still glistening from the dew. The Paragon fog held on for the ride. In the end it was the only true witness to this great event, and it seems fitting—Gage, me, and Paragon bonded in this
rich testimony. We are writing a new chapter in our personal history, about to turn the page to a thousand brilliant tomorrows. The future has arrived with all of the pomp and circumstance it promised it would bring. Cymbals and gongs ring out somewhere in the world, an entire solar system is born in our honor, a thousand shooting stars evaporate into the atmosphere riding their final flights, soaring through the timelessness of space as an homage to our love.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you.” Gage never takes his eyes off mine.
Our lips meet as we secure the covenant with a kiss. No holding back, tongues and teeth, our mouths linger a little longer than the traditional church peck, but this is no religious establishment, and there would be nothing traditional about our marriage, already I know this. We are just this side of gods, angels with destinies far more complex than your average human beings. Gage and I are going to change the world—change the ethereal plane—the fate of those in the Tenebrous Woods. We’re about to roar to life as a force and turn this entire universe on its ear.
You’re my wife, Skyla. I’m going to love you forever.
A deep moan rumbles from my throat, sensual, lustful, and I feed it to him right through the hot portal of my mouth.
“Let’s get out of here,” I whisper over his lips. “I’ve got a wedding gift I’ve been dying to give you.”
“What’s that?” He gives a wicked a grin as if he already knows.
“Me.”
He presses a kiss to my lips. “Best present ever.”
Gage and I make our way down the streets of Host just as the storm blows over and the clouds illuminate with a seam of silver light. We run hand in hand, drunk off our love, stopping every now and again to engage in a mouthwatering kiss as laughter brews in our throats.
“Where to?” I sing over the traffic and the noise. Our souls had already arrived at their destination.
Gage nods across the street at a rusty-colored building with the paint peeling off the trim like an old sunburn. Host Inn. A bright orange sign sits high in the sky like an artificial sun, reading Hotel.
He leads us over, renting a room while I try to hide my bubbling elation. It smells like musk and old cigarettes, and for some strange reason I settle into the idea that this is what being stuck in a job you dislike must smell like. But in minutes Gage and I will be perfuming the air with our love—an entire spring meadow, chocolate and strawberries, aloe and tropical sunsets. We’re steps away from living in the world of our making—making love for the very first time. A montage of sex and sweat runs through my mind, tangled limbs and the weight of his body over mine. A moan gets buried in my chest. I’d take Gage right here on the counter if he let me.
“Box of condoms in the nightstand.” The rail thin man with a missing tooth glares at me as if I’m luring Gage here in the middle of a perfectly good afternoon just to dwindle down the hotel’s supply of prophylactics—and, in a sense, I am. “I charge double than what you’d pay at the convenience store, so if you got your own that’s a good thing. Don’t flush ‘em. Clogs the pipes.” He slips Gage a plastic card key, and we whisk out the door like the room is on fire.
I’m still heady from becoming Mrs. Gage Oliver, and it’s not until we’re standing outside of our hotel room do the butterflies come to life in my stomach, full force like a hurricane. I rack my brain for the date. It’s September 13th. My blood runs cold a moment. It was on December 13th that I married Logan. I shake all thoughts of that fated day out of my mind for now. For a brief moment I consider the coincidence of the number 13. All I’ve ever heard is that 13 is an unlucky number. Of course, Logan and I married on Friday the 13th but we couldn’t help it—much like Gage and I can’t help what we’re doing now.
I press my hand over the cool glass of the window while Gage fiddles with the key. My fingers tremble. Each breath catches in my throat from the palpable excitement.
Here—this place—will always be hallowed. I take in the scene, Gage pressed against the pale sky like a shadow, the number 13 tacked up on the door like an omen. Someone shouts an obscenity in the distance, a girl laughs and screams, the sound of skateboards whir along the sidewalks—it all etches in my brain, locking itself in as a memory that I’ll always cherish because it’s all happening in this sacred span of time.
The door slips open, and Gage leans against the wall looking sexy as hell. That slow spreading smile takes over as he looks at me lovingly with nothing but joy exuding from his being.
“Ready?” His eyes catch the light, and shine a spectral shade of indigo.
“And willing.” I brush my fingers over my sweet husband’s face, the stubble enlivening my senses for what’s to come. This is the new normal, Gage and me locked in lust. I can hardly wait for the endless love we’ll make, the normalcy of cuddling up on the couch, feeding one another stacks of pancakes on lazy Sunday mornings, fighting over the remote then acquiescing because neither of us really cares what we we’re watching so long as we’re together.
Gage picks me up and carries me over the threshold. His chest bucks with every breath, his eyes drill into mine with an intensity I’ve never seen before.
The air in the room is thick and tropical, sweltering from being closed up. The curtains glow a bright tangerine with the outline of daylight running down the seam, but we don’t open them. Gage shuts the door with his foot—the twist of the lock echoes through the room like the charging of a pistol. Gage is locked and loaded and ready to go—so am I, and, for once, not one being in the universe has the authority to stop what’s about to come next.
I slip down from his grasp, the two of us panting into one another, our gaze immovable as stone. My coat drops to the floor, Gage lifts the T-shirt from my body, and it flies off almost voluntarily. I touch my hand to his chest before returning the favor and evicting the shirt right off him.
His features are lost in the shadows. His body looks as if it’s hewn from graphite. My fingers dip into his jeans as he flicks off his shoes. I work the button on his Levi’s and tug at them until they glide off with his boxers. My eyes do a quick, sweeping glance. This man is mine from head to toe. I own him. Maybe not the most PC thought, but in the same respect he owns my body—I want him to. I’m all his, from this day forward to do whatever he pleases—and, most deliciously, vice versa. We had stained each other’s souls with our sweat and tears, and now our Nephilim blood is bonding to create the perfect ethereal being. This is it, the knitting together of our existence will happen in this room on the stage of that bed lying expectantly behind him.
Gage pulls me in by the cheeks and pours fiery kisses straight into my mouth that drip to my feet like lava. He unties my bathing suit top, and it falls to the carpet before I sear my chest over his. Our bare skin quivers at the touch as if we’re drinking each other down. A soft ache filters through me and I press my chest over his, the sensation stirring me to life in ways I hadn’t felt before. All this time I thought I knew Gage, and yet our bodies are virtual strangers. This is the introduction of the ages, the hello-nice-to-meet-you kind of a day—the-come-in-and-stay-for-a-while kind of a night.
Gage lets out a hard aching groan that’s been bottled up for years. His fingers work the button of my jeans, and I jump out of them as if they’re on fire—my bathing suit bottoms sail down with them.
Here we are, Gage and I in nothing more than our flesh and not an objection from nature, my mother—Chloe. I give a private smile because no one in heaven or earth can stop us now.
My toes curl at the sight of him. The anticipation has reduced me to short, staccato breaths. Gage Oliver is gorgeous on a freakish level. He’s alarmingly perfect—sex on a stick. He leans in with his warm breath showering over me. His full lips swallowing down mine. Gage is pulling me in, trying to drink me down, digest me in one ravenous bite.
Our stomachs fuse as he walks me back toward the bed. He pulls wet kiss after kiss off my lips as he lays me down, straddles me with his body. Gage lands on me with his
full weight, and I close my eyes already lost in ecstasy with his hard-on pressed over my stomach. I can feel him there. Feel him. His hot body, the coarse hair of his legs, his warm skin gliding over mine—it’s already so much more than I can take.
Gage hikes up on his elbows alleviating the pressure from my chest, our mouths still locked together. His tongue presses over mine soft at first then quick and forceful as if he were amping up—ready to unleash all of the pent up emotions he stored for this very hour. He parts my thighs with his leg, and my knees rise to either side of his waist. Everything in me throbs to have him. I lift my legs over his back and reach down and wrap my hand around him. Gage is long, hard, and heavy as iron. I run my thumb up over the thick ridge of his penis all the way to the blooming tip. Our kisses increase with ferocity, heat emanates from our bodies like vapors. Our future spins through my mind, fast and furious, like a calendar losing its pages in a windstorm. Destiny predicted Gage and I were fleeting, but tonight we’re proving infinite. This moment already stretches into eternity. I can feel its depth, its breadth—expansive as God. There is something immeasurable happening—something spectacular on a grand scale. It’s as if the entire universe was holding its breath for what the future might bring.
I wrap my hand around Gage and guide him to the most tender part of me, already wet and ready to receive him.
Gage looks down at me, his lids heavy. His eyes glazed over with lust. Skyla—the nightstand. I have to get the—
I shake my head just barely. “I want the first time to be just you.” Mom and all those babies she keeps strapped to her like appendages run through my mind for a fleeting moment. This will be quick, I just need one hit of Gage in the natural. Quick—I balk at how altruistic it sounds. The truth is, I want him to root to me, stay there just that way for all of time. My body is selfish and greedy for him, and at this moment, I’m not in the mood to deny myself.