The Prison of the Angels Page 22

  “Get further up the bed.”

  Egan opens his eyes. He seems to realize slowly that he’s no longer tied down, but when he does he shuffles on his back away from Azazel with pitiful alacrity, as if he somehow thinks he can escape that long reach. He casts me a wild, shamed look.

  “That’ll do,” Azazel decides. “You’d like to ride that now, wouldn’t you Milja? His rod and his staff will comfort you…here in the Valley of the Shadow.”

  Ride that? Yes, always.

  What is he planning?

  I climb back onto the bed, nervous now. Egan is looking from me to Azazel and back again as if we are conspiring assassins. His lips are swollen.

  “And I will fasten him as a peg in a firm place; and he shall be for a glorious throne,” quotes Azazel, wandering around to slap my ass in encouragement. “Get up on your throne, little harlot.”

  “Stop this,” says Egan, his voice sounding gluey. “Leave her alone.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. I’m enjoying this far too much.” As I straddle Egan’s hips, Azazel reaches between our legs, seizes him at the root and guides him inside me.

  All. The. Way.

  Oh he’s big. Wonderfulwonderfulman. I whimper as I sheathe him, and run my hands up his abs and over his chest. I can feel his heart under my hands, his blood racing. I can feel the delicious rub of those hard thongs against my mound as I grind down on him. And I can see the desperation in his eyes.

  “You’ll need your hands for this,” Azazel remarks, hunkering up behind me. “Hold her steady.”

  Suddenly Egan’s hands are free. He pulls them out from behind his back with a groan.

  “I love you,” I whisper—not to comfort him, not for his sake at all, but because my heart is full to the brim, fuller even than my sex, and my words are spilling out beyond my control. I speak to Egan now, and to the Azazel bound in the cave of my memory. They are one and the same.

  “She does,” growls the fallen angel behind me. “You’d better be able to rise to that, because I will not let you disappoint her.”

  His fingers trail up the cleft between my cheeks—up, then down, then probing in. I’m already full of Egan, but that’s not the entrance he’s looking for and shock makes me gasp, “I can’t!”

  “You can. You will. And if you want both of us, you’ll have to.”

  I pitch forward onto my braced arms, making a nervous noise as he presses my clench.

  “Hold her,” he growls, shifting in close, scouring me with his rough thighs. He’s blunt like a battering ram at my closed portal, but thankfully he’s taking it slow—and my ass is already slicked from his earlier eruption.

  “Christ.” Egan jams a hand against my breastbone, his fingers and thumb lying either side of my throat. I’m grateful, even though it constricts my air; there’s no way I’d be able to hold myself up over his chest otherwise. My arms are already shaking.

  “No, please, oh God—”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  Oh God oh God oh God. My vision is blurring and my breath is so fast and shallow that my head swims. All my consciousness is focused down behind me. There’s sweat running down the declivity of my spine and into my bum-crack.

  I’m so full already. He can’t fit! How can he fit?

  But he does, and his triumphant entry is like the entrance of a king into a city, accompanied by trumpets and flags and applause. I’m stretched like I’ve never been stretched. I writhe my hips and ass, trying to find ease, trying to make more space for him, grinding up against Egan without even thinking about it.

  “Can you feel me, priest?” Azazel asks, and even he sounds breathless. “Because I can feel you. Can you feel me inside her with you? This surely must be a mortal sin, father.”

  “Ah,” is all Egan’s strangled answer. He’s rocking beneath me, very gently. I don’t know if it’s deliberate, but from my perspective the stimulation helps a lot. The more Azazel pushes and the more Egan rocks, the more space I seem to be able to find inside myself. I’m unfurling like a rose. There’s no resistance left; I’m falling apart in their embrace. When I look up to the head of the bed I see us reflected in the mirror there, Azazel dark as a thundercloud behind me, his hands biting into my bejeweled hips, Egan a supine block like a fallen marble titan. Almost all the motion is in Azazel’s thrusts and the shudder of my breasts and the toss of my head. I’m tiny in contrast to them; outmassed and outflanked and overshadowed. It looks like I will be crushed between them.

  “This is what you want, isn’t it, my little whore?” Azazel grunts as he slowly pumps me. “This is what you’ve wanted all along, admit it.”

  “Ahhhh,” is all I can answer.

  Then Egan’s other hand moves to my breast and captures my left nipple, and I see fireworks. The spitting coruscation runs down my skin, chasing the pattern of my jewelry like it’s tracing the ley-lines of my flesh. It meets the shivering plume of pleasure rising around Azazel’s invasion and the great solid burn of Egan’s impalement.

  Oh yes oh yes OH YES.

  I am flying apart with every sparking thrill of sensation. I’m helpless to resist. The vision in the mirror strikes me with witless wonder. I am caught between hammer and stone; between black and blond; between darkness and light. They will destroy me. They will tear me apart.

  There’s a part of me that wants that.

  But they don’t; as I disintegrate in my final orgasmic firestorm and I start wailing, it is my implosion that pulls them in. I hear Azazel’s thick grunt at the same time as I see Egan bare his teeth and arch, digging his heels into the bed. And I feel them both inside me; I feel the fire and the storm, I feel Hell and Heaven meet and become one.

  We come together. There’s no distinction between Egan’s climax and mine and Azazel’s.

  And there, on the falling edge of orgasm, as we sag and sway and our sweat runs together and Azazel’s lips are in my hair and Egan’s fingers brush my lips as if to check that I am still breathing, still alive—there, for a moment, is true bliss. They’re not pulling me apart; there is no rivalry any more. I’m holding them both, deep inside me, my whole body an embrace and a chalice.

  Oh, that stillness, that peace—I wish it could last forever. Egan’s hooded unfocused gaze drifts across my face and up to Azazel’s over my shoulder, and I see no resentment in his eyes and no dread, just exhausted acceptance. I hold my breath as if I can keep that moment in suspension. I never want to leave. I never want it to end. I am the eye of the storm; I am the fulcrum, and in me my lovers are in perfect balance and perfect unity.

  But the eye of the storm always moves on. My limbs are shaking so much that it’s only Egan’s braced hand holding me up, and with a sigh Azazel slides away to let me fall to the side, stretching my cramped thighs. He’s being merciful, but the loss makes me cry out. I slump into the hollow of Egan’s arm, my head falling against his heaving chest, and he drapes that arm about my shoulders. The action is automatic, I suspect. His own gaze is on the mirror overhead, where graphic highlights of our tryst are being played out. He looks dazed.

  “Well taken, Milja,” says Azazel, kneeling up and shaking out his black hair. “Beautifully done.” He runs his fingers over the curve of my hip. I can see his face in another mirror; his eyes have gone back from black to opaque silver. His smile is crooked; for the moment he is mollified, satisfied even—but there’s no delight in his expression like there should be after we’ve made love; like there was in the past. He looks haunted and he sounds sad. “Just…beautiful.”

  I miss his simple, innocent lechery so much that it hurts.

  Pulling myself up out of my nest in Egan’s embrace, I lay my hand on Azazel’s breastbone. His heart is still pounding hard. He feels wholly human.

  It’s not fair, what we’ve done to you. We’ve made you all complicated and confused and screwed-up, like we are. “If you want beautiful, Azazel, you should have stuck to Heaven.”

  He tips his forehead against mine. “But then I would not have love
d you.”

  My heart pangs. “Do you…” I start. “Can you…?”

  “I love you as I have never loved any other mortal, Milja.” He kisses me softly. “World without end.”

  You mean that? His breath is tangled with mine and his salt sweat stings my lips. “Oh Azazel,” I whisper.

  Then he reaches down past me to grab Egan by the neck. Egan doesn’t fight the hand around his throat, but the tiniest growl comes back into Azazel’s voice nevertheless: “You. Keep her safe. Make her happy.”

  He nods, mute, and Azazel’s mouth moves into a smile. The Watcher’s eyes, however, do not join in.

  I woke up in Egan’s bed with a feeling of impending disaster. It took a few moments for the dread to take shape though; a few comforting moments of rumpled white sheets and soft pillows and daylight filtering under the curtains.

  Then I recalled everything.

  Oh crap. Oh crap. My recollected dream unspooled behind my eyes, just like those action replays in the gilded mirrors. What the hell have I done?

  I’d tied Egan up and let my demon master abuse him, was what. I’d joined in avidly, for all my protestations. I’d let my white knight see all the twisted lust I sheltered in the depths of my soul. I was no damsel in distress—even he must see that now. I was more a Belle Dame Sans Merci. A sorcerous harlot, just like the Bible warned.

  Egan is never going to talk to me again.

  Floundering out of the quilt, I raked my fingers through my mussy hair. There was a small mirror on the dresser and I caught sight of myself, white-faced and wild-eyed.

  Oh you’ve screwed up this time, Milja. You’ve blown it up and burnt it down.

  I was wearing an old T-shirt of Egan’s—I’d asked for something clean to sleep in last night—but there was no sign of my own clothes that I’d discarded on the floor. On the bedside table was a mug of black coffee. I touched it tentatively, wondering how long it had been there, and found it tepid. Better than nothing though; I drank it gratefully.

  I pictured Egan bringing in the mug and standing there, watching me as I slept. Had he felt angry? Sickened? Horny?

  I’d climaxed in my sleep, of course, because—well, because I could. Unless Egan had taken matters into his own hands this morning, he’d have been pumped up with frustration. It could only have made him angrier with me.

  Shrugging on an old toweling robe that hung on the back of the door, I walked on tiptoes through to the living room, dreading the moment our eyes would lock. The television was on, tuned to a news channel, but no one was watching. The room was empty. I looked through the open door into the kitchen.

  Egan was sitting at the little oak table. He’d been keeping himself busy since waking, by the looks of things; the washing machine was humming and there were two plastic shopping bags on the kitchen counter. He had an elaborate henge of stacked toast cooling on a plate in front of him, but he didn’t seem to be eating it. He leaned back in his chair, face blank and his gaze downturned, focused somewhere far away.

  My stomach rolled over.

  “I went into the village for bread and toothbrushes and stuff,” he said. His tone was flat.

  I walked in, pulled out the other chair and sat down opposite him, my back to the open door. He didn’t look up at me. “I’m sorry,” I said hoarsely, knuckling my hands together. I’d sworn off apologizing, but this time it was different. “I’m really sorry, Egan.”

  “For what?” His voice was as colorless as his face was expressionless.

  “For what happened. Last night.” I cleared my throat as my voice croaked with anxiety. “For what I did to you.”

  His gaze was light but impenetrable. “Sure, I could have left if I’d wanted. Just like you said.”

  I rubbed at my lips, my fingers cold and clumsy, the flesh beneath them weirdly numb. I sniffed hard. “I shouldn’t have… That’s not an excuse. I shouldn’t have done those things.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said, gaze flicking to the margins of the room. “Your man’s a bit on the overwhelming side.”

  It would be easy to blame Azazel, of course.

  I was having trouble breathing. I cleared my throat again, but my voice came out husky. “No. It wasn’t him. It was me, Egan. My dream. My fantasy. Everything.” My hands on the tabletop were all twisted; they seemed the only things I could focus on comfortably. “My fault.”

  “Yours?” he said at last, his voice sliding over the top of my bowed head.

  “Those dreams are mine.” I had to tell him. He deserved to know the truth about me—the awful truth. It was too late to pretend to innocence. “Tying you up. Hurting you. It’s me. It’s what I like.”

  When he didn’t respond I risked a glance. There was a very faint crease between his brows. “Pardon?” he said softly, as if he wanted to be sure of what he’d heard.

  “It turned me on.” My lungs were almost failing. “A lot. Crazy turned me on.”

  “Tying me up and hurting me?”

  “I’m messed up, Egan. I know. Oh God. You don’t deserve this.”

  “Don’t I now?”

  “Whenever I see you bruised or whatever… The monastery, handcuffed. Cutting your casts off. Oh God. Even when you were ill in Ethiopia.”

  “And there I was under the distinct impression that you liked your men dominant.”

  “I do.” I forced a deep breath. “Oh yes. But I also like my big, scary dominant men tied up. Frightened. Raging. Helpless. It gets me… You can see why, can’t you?”

  His face was a mask again.

  “The cave, I guess,” I said miserably. “What you said; imprinting. What happens to us as children makes…scars. They don’t go away. I was seven. That’s how I first saw him, that’s exactly how I knew him until I was eighteen. So it’s still there inside me and it got all mixed up with sex as I got older. As I fell in love with him.”

  Silence.

  “Sometimes I wish we didn’t have to ever be kids. It would all be so much simpler if we didn’t have to go through growing up—if we were just made as adults, ready for life. Full-on human beings. Everything inside our heads would be so straightforward!” I tried to smile. “We’d be like the angels.”

  Silence.

  “Although,” I added because I had to fill that horrible void with something, “even they have massive Daddy Issues.”

  But I was thinking; He’s going to walk out. He’s going to stand up and walk away, because that’s what he does when things get sticky and intimate. Only this time it’ll be forever.

  “When I was a boy,” he said, “I was sexually abused.”

  If he had reached across the table and slapped me it could not have shocked me more. But when I stared at him his face had not changed. It was still eerily calm. He hadn’t raised his voice, and there was no emotion in his measured tones.

  I was the one who flushed in shame.

  “Between the ages of twelve and fifteen,” he clarified. “Pretty much every day.”

  “Oh God, Egan…” I wanted to grab him and hug him, but that might have been the worst possible response—I didn’t have a clue. I put my hand to my mouth. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

  He went still again, the words locked away behind his lips.

  “Was it…a priest?”

  “No.” His lack of affect was unnerving. “Why do you people always assume it’s a priest?”

  “I’m sorry, I just thought…”

  “It was my older sister. Mary.”

  Mary? My hands flew up over my face without conscious volition, so that I was peering at him over my fingertips. “The one who…?” Committed suicide. “…Died?”

  “She took to sneaking into my bed at night and…” He lifted a hand and made a sketchy gesture as if stroking the air. “She got a kick out of getting me off. I never tried to stop her.”

  “Oh hell, Egan. You were just a kid.”

  “So was she.”

  “It wasn’t your fault!”

  “I enjoyed it.�
��

  That shut me the fuck up.

  Cracks were appearing in his façade of inscrutability; his voice suddenly sounded grim. “I never, never initiated anything, I swear—but I’d lie there every night and wait, and hope. It was the best, the most amazing thing I could imagine. It was our wonderful secret.”

  Hormones. Adolescent juice. She was older than you; she should have known better. I shook my head. “You were a child.”

  “Bullshit. The age of reason is seven, under canon law. Oh, I knew it was wrong, alright. I knew it was shameful. I never told my mother, I never told my friends. I never took it to the confessional.” And there it was, oozing through the cracks in his voice: an awful self-loathing, black as tar. His shrug was savage. “She just lost interest in me when she got a real boyfriend. It simply stopped. She never said anything. I was fecking devastated.”

  Oh God, Egan. Oh God.

  ‘He’s got love and guilt more confused than you can imagine,’ Uriel had told me.

  No wonder you ran for a foreign country and a father you hardly knew, the first opportunity you were given. No wonder her suicide wrecked you.

  No wonder the breakdown, and the clinging to a God of eternal law. The self-discipline and the self-denial.

  No wonder your remorseful, obsessive chivalry toward women.

  No wonder you always fall for the ones you’re not supposed to have.

  No wonder Penemuel had you by the balls.

  No wonder you’re so scared of love, and of lust. No wonder you gladly gave up control of those things to the Church.

  You are even more messed up than I am.

  “That’s my childhood,” he said with a sickly smile. “My scar. Now you know. Apart from Father Giuseppe, you are the only person in the world I have ever told.” He reached out and pushed the toast fortress with his fingers, so that it collapsed across the table.

  I stretched into the gap and grabbed his hand between both of mine. It was icy cold despite his apparent calm, as if all his blood had retreated from his extremities to fuel a fight or flight response. I wondered at how much courage it must have taken for him to trust me with a confession so awful.

  “So what do you think of me now, Milja?”