Unable to face the truth in The Watcher’s gaze, I look down at my lap. I’m dressed in white, yet stained with my own wickedness. I have been the wolf in sheep’s clothing all along.
“Irin,” I hear Legion say. “There are more important matters to discuss other than Eden’s petty, mortal defects.” His words sting, but there’s no bite in his words. He’s trying to spare me, just like he did yesterday. I lift my head to watch him come sit beside her.
“Oh, Legion,” she trills, gripping his knee with red, pointed fingernails. “I’m just having a little fun! But you’re right. Business first. Then pleasure.”
“The Calling, Irin. When will it happen? And where?”
“Ah, ah, ah,” she admonishes, waving a finger from side-to-side. “First, we must discuss the terms. You know that.” She gazes up into his face with black stars glittering in her eyes. She bites her sensuous bottom lip seductively.
Legion replies, boredom in his tone. “Name your price.”
“You know what I want. You always know what I want.” Then The Watcher’s—Irin’s—low-lidded stare slides to me. “Does she?”
“Irrelevant.” Legion’s nostril’s flare.
“Are you sure about that?” she teases, the hand on his thigh crawling up higher with lazy strokes. I feel fire in my cheeks.
“Get on with it, Irin.”
“Fine,” she says with a huff, flinging her hair behind her ear with more effort than necessary. “As you know, I am not a soothsayer, so I can’t see into the future. I have no idea when or where she’ll be Called.”
“Then we’re done here,” Legion says, brushing her hand from his lap. Something inside me secretly rejoices.
“But…there is a way,” Irin quickly adds before Legion can recoil completely.
Legion’s jaw works in annoyance before demanding, “Talk.”
“You’ll need to seek an outside source. Someone that can glimpse into her past in order to unearth her future.”
My past.
I shake my head reflexively.
“Something to hide, dear?” Irin drawls. She replaces her hand on Legion’s leg, grazing it with her pointed fingernails while turning her venomous leer on me. She’s provoking me…toying with me. Why? What the hell do I care?
“No,” I deadpan.
“Lies.” She says it like my dishonesty amuses her.
Legion clears his throat, drawing her attention back to him. “You have minutes, Irin. Seconds.”
“Certainly, sweetie,” she grins at him. “But first, I require payment.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not how this works.”
“Ah, but it is. If you want this piece of information, you’ll play by my rules. If not, you can go enjoy the party. Maybe our little Eden will be Called tonight? Pity. I have so many human souls in attendance—many that Lucifer would love to claim for himself. Such a shame that my guards will have to put her down immediately for breaking the rules.” She sighs as if the thought of killing me bores her. As if the sight of my blood sprayed on the jacquard walls would be no more than a nuisance.
“Fine. What do you want from me?”
Irin shifts her body to face Legion, pressing her pert breasts against his bicep. A sick feeling enters my gut, and I feel the champagne churn its way up my throat.
“A kiss. Kiss me, Legion. Make me feel that fire that burns so bright and hot within you. Make it kindle down in my toes and lick up my thighs. Brand my lips with your wickedness, and the knowledge you seek is yours.”
I swallow down the rising bile and roll my eyes. Is this woman for real?
Who makes a deal like that? Who the hell does she think she is to request something so paltry and immature and intimate from another individual? She’s the ultimate narcissist. And I know Legion will see right through her bullshit.
“Deal.”
My head whips so fast that my vision blurs. No. He can’t. He won’t.
Lilith stiffens beside me, but doesn’t say a word. I look to Phenex, to Cain, but both of their expressions are impassive. Why are they letting her manipulate them? And why is Legion—the scariest, strongest person I’ve ever met—being reduced to no more than a prostitute?
I want to force myself to look away when Irin sits up on her knees, aligning her face with his, but I can’t. She strokes the apple of his cheek before raking her fingers through his hair. She’s trying to make this romantic, tender. She’s trying to seduce him.
Legion stays perfectly still as Irin caresses him as a lover would. He’s not even fighting this farce. It’s like he wants this. He wants her.
She moves in closer, licking her lips in preparation. His own lips part, ready to accept. Red painted claws grip his nape as his hands press against her lower back. Oh God, he does want this. He’s into this. It doesn’t matter that Irin is a snake. All he sees is tits and ass, and he’s reduced to a typical male. Why did I believe he would react any differently? Why did I expect him to show just a modicum of self-respect?
My blood runs ice cold in my veins as I watch their lips collide with so much passion that Irin moans into his mouth, giving Legion entrance. Tongues slide against each other in an erotic dance, teeth gnash against each other in fervor. He palms her ass through the sheer fabric, kneading and pulling her closer into his body. Irin grasps his hair, eager to take more of him inside her.
I can’t see this. I can’t pretend that this is ok. That this doesn’t disgust me. That this doesn’t…
The glass flute in my hand shatters against the pearl and marble floor as I all but run for the double doors, desperate to escape the sounds of their frantic kissing.
They don’t even flinch.
In my haste to flee the soft-core porn behind the doors adorned with black diamond eyes, I find myself back in the ballroom. It’s even more crowded. Even the music seems louder. I scan the mass of partygoers for any signs of familiarity, but I don’t see any of them. Andras must be busy with his boys, and I have no clue where Jinn and Toyol could be.
I’m lost in a sea of writhing, wicked bodies, slickened in sweat and sin. They’re all just a blur…just a blur of lust and greed and poison desire. I stagger through the haze of sex and smoke on shaky legs until I reach the bar. The polished wood is cold under my fingers as I grip the edge of the bar top. I slide onto a stool, grateful to rest my feet and my weary mind.
“Can I get you something? Champagne?” a bartender asks, holding a bottle of effervescent pink liquid. He’s oddly attractive, his features too soft, too pretty for his hard, muscular body draped in nothing but tight, black shorts.
I fix my lips to decline, but stop myself. I’ve been snatched from my home, ridiculed and beaten and humiliated. Dressed up like a doll only so I could be taunted by a five-foot-tall temptress. Then I was forced to watch her make out with my captor, the very same man that took me to keep me as his pet. I’m done being told what to say, what to wear, what to drink. No more. They want me to be docile and meek. They want me to be the weak little human that I’m supposed to be.
I can’t.
I can’t pretend anymore.
I can’t ignore the fire coiling in my gut and slithering in my veins.
I can’t ignore what I am.
“No. I’ll have the punch.”
The pretty bartender looks at me and squints, as if he can see right through to my mortal soul. I lift my chin a fraction, steeling my nerves.
“You got it,” is all he says before grabbing a glass and sliding it across the bar top. I down it in three giant gulps.
“Another.”
“Careful, sweetie, this stuff’ll—”
“I’m a big girl. Another.”
He lifts his perfectly arched brows in speculation, but refills my glass. I down it just as quickly as the first.
“Thanks,” I slur before he can saunter away to serve another patron.
Then I feel it.
Liquid fireworks burst in my bloodstream, carrying the toxic ecstasy to the tip
s of my toes. My fingers tingle as if they’re being brushed with feathers, and the surface of my skin burns with golden heat. I’m on fire. My vision turns a glittering blue, then red, then green. Everything around me sparkles like morning dew on blades of grass, a million tiny teardrop prisms bursting with light and color. I gasp at the way rainbows dance on bare shoulders and slither down legs. Music not only caresses my ears, but glides across my lips. I can taste the notes, salty and sweet on my tongue. I swallow it down and let the melody move through me, leading me to the dance floor.
I glide across galaxies on heels made of papier-mâché clouds. The crowd swallows me up, fondling me with eager fingers and thrusting hips. I move with them, become one with them. There’s no judgment here. No shame or fear of persecution. Just movement and sound and sensation. I’m as light as a bird on wings borne of stardust—a tiny speck of blinding light in a vast universe.
I dance through song after song, eyes closed and hands high. My body tells me I need to relieve myself, but I can’t stop. I can’t stop the feeling of brilliant bliss tethered to my veins, controlling me like a marionette on spider web strings.
Minutes, or maybe hours, later, the needs of my bladder become too intense to ignore. The crowd purges me as if it knows that I must go, pushing me on a gold-dusted tidal wave. I stagger to a hallway I’ve never seen before, wriggle the knob of the first door. Locked. I try another. And another. Until I find one that twists easily.
The good news: it’s a bathroom.
The bad news: it’s occupied.
Very, very occupied.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I shriek, shielding my eyes. But not before I get an eyeful of the orgy going down on the toilet seat.
“No need to apologize, sweetheart. Come in.”
No. No, I don’t want to come in. But I do. Shit, I have to.
I take a step inside the bathroom cast in gold and red and black. Much like the rest of the house. My feet tremble on my strappy heels.
“Now close the door.”
My hand reaches back for the knob until my quaking fingertips meet the lock. Mindlessly, I click it.
“Now…lift your head. Lift your head and look at me.”
A voice in my head screams no, begging me to keep my eyes cast to the ground. Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. My neck screams with strain as I try to still its movement. My eyes burn with the effort to keep them from focusing. I can’t look. I shouldn’t look.
But I want to. Need to.
The man behind the voice sits on the toilet seat lid, his beautiful, ethereal face a mask of erotic delight. Hair dusted with burnish sunlight, his full, pouty mouth a sensual slash of a smirk. His eyes are neither blue or violet or hazel. Dusk. His irises shine with shades of dusk, shifting like the dozing sky.
He’s naked, completely bare in his otherworldly perfection. Every bit of him is sculpted alabaster, hard and smooth and impenetrable. A woman kneels between his legs, wearing nothing but a corset and thong underwear, giving me a view of her supple, heart-shaped backside as she takes him in her mouth over and over and over. She moans around his length as if the taste of him is as delicious as he is hard. Her own petite hand creeps between her thighs to flick and knead through the wet strip of lace that covers her sex.
Another woman sits on the man’s knee, riding him. I can hear the friction of skin-on-skin, can see the glistening dampness that glazes his thigh with every flex of her shapely hips. Her fingers are buried deep inside another girl who stands before her, kissing her lips and fondling her full breasts.
Their moans, their cries…his stare. I can’t look away. I can’t deny the gush of arousal beneath my scrap of satin. I’ve never seen anything so erotic in my life. And the more I watch—the more I scent their need heavy in the air, clinging to my skin like the mist of dawn—the more I want to feel what they feel.
They move together with such grace and fluidity, as if pleasure is second nature. The woman between the man’s legs slides a hand over the grooves of his abs until she reaches a nipple. She pinches the small bud between black fingernails, causing his whole body to twitch. I find myself flinching as well.
“Come here,” the man commands, his voice vibrating through me, embedding itself in my bones. He crooks a finger. “Come here.”
I take a step closer, my legs not my own. My lips part reflexively and I suck in a breath of sex-scented air.
“Come to me,” he croons, beckoning me. I imagine that finger grazing my nipples before trailing a slow path over my belly. I imagine it dipping inside me so deep that I scream. And with that come hither motion, he brings me to completion, knees shaking and eyes glazed.
I walk until the floor falls away and I am merely coasting on a cloud of my own devious desires. I walk until my shins touch the soft flesh of a pert ass. Until I can see devil-red lips sliding over his ridged hardness, swallowing him inch-by-maddeningly thick-inch. The girl riding this thigh reaches up to graze my goosefleshed arm with a feather’s kiss, and I don’t stop her. It feels good. Like I’m being licked. Like I’m being fucked.
I shiver where I stand as his eyes roam my body. Sin peeking through the white bars of my innocent imprisonment. I can feel his stare, stroking, prying. Seeing through to the wickedness festering inside me and relishing in the turmoil. He doesn’t back down, doesn’t recoil or shame me for my curiosity. It pleases him. Arouses him. And in that stare swirling with eroticism, it arouses me.
He brushes the hair of the girl between his legs, and she pulls away, releasing him with a resounding pop. I stagger back, letting her pass and watch her join the other women. As if it were choreographed, the woman on his thigh stands, and the three of them…the three of them…
“Don’t be scared,” the man coos. “I won’t hurt you, and neither will they. They’re very friendly.”
At that, the girls begin to giggle between kisses and licks. They look so…fun. So free with their bodies. I’ve always dreamt about being a girl like that—obviously beautiful, carefree, unstoppable.
“You can be,” the man remarks, reading my thoughts. “You can be like them and more. Just come to me.”
I don’t question how he heard my unspoken ramblings. I don’t question the absurdity of his claims. I take a step forward, close enough that the sides of my legs brush his knees. He’s still hard, still glistening with a mix of ruby lipstick and saliva. I could lean forward and feel it against my thigh. I could reach out and take it in my hand.
“Do it,” he urges, flexing his hips forward slightly. “Do it. You know you want to.”
I do want to. He would pulse wildly in my palm. I could almost feel that silkened skin against mine.
“Do it,” he says again. “I want you to.”
My fingers tremble with longing. I need to do this. My body is aching with the need to touch him.
So I do.
He moans loudly the second I brush the slickened tip of him. Spurred by his reaction, I drag my fingers over the veins and ridges, all the way to the root. He throbs for me. Wants me. His body becomes radioactive just by my touch.
“More,” he rasps, eyes hooded.
I fist his length slowly at first, building momentum and pressure with every stroke. My mouth waters as I imagine him pumping in and out of me. I want his massive hardness deep inside me. I want to feel his heartbeat within my womb, coaxing the strongest orgasm of my life.
“Yes,” he groans. “Turn around.”
I don’t even try to deny myself the feeling of pure exhilaration and craving as I do as I’m told. He grasps my hips from behind, pulling me closer to him. He spreads my legs so they fall on either side of him and positions me to hover right over him. Right over the part I want buried inside me to the hilt.
My skirt is shoved up over my ass. My lace thong is pushed to one side. And before I can object or breathe or think, we collide.
I cry out in a heat of ecstasy that I’ve never experienced. The sheer size and strength of him tears me apart, but
the pleasure eclipses the pain. He touches all the ugly parts of me—all the deviousness and deceit—and makes them beautiful. I’m invincible, untouchable, as I sit on his throne built of sweat and sin. The queen of corruption. His empress of evil.
The woman reclaims her spot between his legs and begins licking…licking where he and I meet. Licking the wetness that pools with every deep thrust. Another comes to palm my breasts, bringing them together to lick and nibble. And the other kisses me, long, deep and sensually, swallowing my moans and replacing them with her own.
I’ve tasted contentment. I’ve eaten euphoria. The taste of paradise coats my tongue and slides down my throat, filling me until I am whole.
We move together, as if this was always meant to be. As if I was always meant to be his, and theirs, and ours.
I lean back and rest my head against his shoulder, reveling in this state of pure bliss. My hips move on their own accord, meeting him thrust for impossibly deep thrust. He knows my body so well—they all do. I would have been afraid with anyone else, but I’m not with them. This is where I belong.
“Eden,” the man grunts in my ear as he pushes upward. He begins to swell within my quivering flesh, filling me to the brim. “Eden. Eden.” He says my name over and over as he gets closer. Over and over as he brings me to the brink with him.
“Eden. Eden. Eden…”
My heart pounds in my ears, echoing with every resounding slap of skin against skin.
“Eden. Eden. Eden.”
The banging becomes louder as I get so close I can taste the sweet and saltiness of release on my tongue. I gasp on lips made of sugared cherries. My hands grip strands of spun sunshine. I feel it…feel it pounding toward me, against me, inside me.
“Eden. Eden. Eden!”
Eyes shut tight, I throw my head my back and scream, releasing every drop of liquid need from my quaking frame. It’s never ending, unrelenting, a force of nature within itself. Sensation sweeps through me like a hurricane, and I am the eye of the storm—weightless, still and deadly.
When I finally open my eyes, I’m alone and leaning up against the door. It rattles violently, surely from the aftermath of my orgasm.