So, I controlled what I could. And for now, that meant being here with her.
The squeeze of her fingers returned me to the present moment.
I wished she wouldn’t touch me like that. It rearranged my atoms in ways that made me feel out of control, which was so unfamiliar that it sent me into a spiral every time our bodies grazed.
“Have you stayed?” she asked. “Have you been in the house, I mean? When my husband and…” She looked over her shoulder at the woolen mattress and waited for my gaze to follow. My pulse quickened at the memory of her skin, the heat of her body, the shallow gasps as they joined.
Sex? Of course that’s what she was asking. I wasn’t sure whether to chuckle at the absurdity of the question, given the flicker of anger whenever I thought of someone else holding dominion over her. I loved the idea of my human grabbing the mortal realm by the scruff of its neck and taking it for a ride, if it brought her power or pleasure or joy.
“Did I stay to watch you left unsatisfied?” I asked, still facing the sea beyond the city.
“Well, Eros…” The moniker was a taunt, though not unkind. “I’ve been wondering…”
Blood flowed southward. I was no stranger to fucking. I’d shattered headboards from Egypt to Canaan. I once spent seven infernal months rolling around with one of Shaushka’s daughters, until the highest-ranking members of Hittite pantheon turned her into an olive tree, if only to force her to take a break. Forever was monotonous, and holy shit were gods drowning in the debilitating endlessness of time.
These human souls, on the other hand, had no seconds to spare.
I was the one made of the ghosts that moved in the night. I shifted between realms in a step. I was not bound by the laws or physics of men. So how was it that this woman of flesh moved around me before I could blink? How was she in front of me with the bravery of the highest deity in any pantheon, touching the face of Eros like the Psyche to whom she likened herself? Maybe it was hubris that had kept me from expecting the movement, or perhaps I’d underestimated her spirit. But Eleni lifted onto her toes, bringing her lips as close to mine as she dared.
“Don’t.”
Her lips hovered unbearably close to mine. “Then stop me.”
This was no fantasy.
This wasn’t the impulse of an earthbound beast or the incubi beyond the veil.
This was where daydream met the moment upon waking.
She waited a hair’s breadth from my lips as if she needed my permission. The radiant pinks and blues and greens that streaked and swirled amidst the opal of her spirit danced close enough to taste. The moment became a throb, became a need.
And that was it.
My life, or whatever I had that passed as one, ended and began with a kiss.
If I had to define my existence, I would see it in three acts.
First, there was the time before humans.
I was Hell’s Prince, bound by duty, moved forward by the idle days of beings and realms, without the infringement of mortals and their ways.
The last page of that chapter was written the day Shala’s stoned and broken body peered through the veil in her final moments and asked me to stay.
In my second act, so brief as if it were a whisper, there was my lightning flash experiencing what it might be like to be a god with his human. Had I a semblance of apathy, as I might have with anyone else, perhaps I would have risen to godhood. I would have acolytes, worshippers, throngs of humans doing my bidding. I might have sipped from the cup of their praise, had the faithful among them etch my story into stone, become a name among men.
But I didn’t make it past my first and only human.
Shala’s death uncoiled the tightly wound pieces within me that took me a mortal century in Hell to rebuild.
Hundreds of years later, I achieved the impossible.
I put her behind me. I went on.
Act three began, not just with Eleni, not just her courage, nor her openness and acceptance, but from this moment.
Her mouth crashed into mine, and I was unmade.
The sharp, diamond essence was wet on her tongue.
