Her face was turning red, and not in embarrassment.
Holding up my hands, I softened my approach. “I know. He’s tricky in the way he gets what he wants. He said you never had to tell me. He suggested that you could torment me by withholding the statement. And you will!” I smiled, the last vestments of my human mask fading and the real me on full display for her to enjoy. “You will torment me. But… you know just as well as he does that I can see all the beauty of your thoughts. So don’t be mad at me or cross with him.” My smile stretched, the hideousness of my mouth and all the sharp teeth on display. “Get it? Cross?”
“That is not….” But the corner of her mouth twitched.
Oh, but it was. “It is funny, my soul.”
I was myself before her, all charred skin and crackling fire. Massive, winged, ugly, pure. Taking her dirty fingers, I brought them to my lips for a kiss. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. I have not felt fear in so long that when you disappeared last night….” What really was there to say? “I love you. I know you’re angry. But you are only angry, truly angry, because you love me and it scares you.”
Pearl worked to collect herself in her storm of feelings, letting out a deep breath as she snatched back her fingers and pressed her palms to her face. One moment passed, then another. Her breath slowed, her heart rate normalized. She peeked through her fingers and looked at me as if to say what am I going to do with you?
She was going to love me. Already, it throbbed in her chest right beside the annoyance. And it frightened her to no end.
But I reveled in both.
She was so stiff, and I was so much larger. So I let my wings hover around her slight form as if they might embrace her. “Pearl, do you want to talk about the Cathedral?”
“No.”
“Should we discuss Darius?” She had withstood far more than my son had given her credit for. That pussy was unable to know her like I did. Pearl would have eaten Darius’ face down to the bone. Though I am glad she didn’t. He probably tasted terrible.
Voice smaller, she answered, “I’d rather not.”
It was like pulling teeth sometimes with this woman, but I loved every moment of it. “Okay. Then let me bridge the gap you have failed to address. Why haven’t you asked me if I knew about the boy?”
Lips turning down in a frown, eyes flagging, my soul went from queen to grieving mother. “If you had known, you would have offered him to me in exchange for exactly what your son demanded.”
She was so right. I which is why I had offered the boy when I really wanted to get my way and make her a bit less angry about the wedding thing. Though I had not anticipated Yeshua would act after only having seen my bride a single time. Though it would be a lie to deny I was grateful he had.
My worrisome boy wasn’t usually so spontaneous. Which meant he was also desperate.
What Pearl really should really have been asking was, how did my son know about the boy?
God had not whispered that secret in his ear. I had. Tucked it right in his memories so the desperate bugger might have an opportunity to get what he wanted most.
For me to be laden with a soul.
And now I was. One who’d acknowledged she was my wife.
The part of me the fates had finally returned.
“Please tell me you love me, Pearl.”
She wanted to say it badly, because she was infinitely good. She craved the moment she might divulge that there was more to her than confusion and sorrow. But she didn’t have the conviction—
“I love you.” Her voice had been small, her eyes on the floor when it slipped over her lips.
My jaw might have hit the floor. She admitted it! The wife I swept up and began waltzing around the room as my wings broke everything in their path said it.
And the pair of us were laughing.
This was real.
“I don’t deserve you.” I never would. EVER.
Laughing, she agreed, “You don’t.”
Swallowing her words, I kissed her so hard I knew my teeth tore at her lips. And I drank of my bride. I lapped at her closing wounds. I ravaged.
What I had done to her at the wedding had been calculating and boring. What I did to her then? Poets would write songs about it.
That dress, no matter how she gasped or bled at my onslaught, was demolished. Her filthy skin, scoured clean by my tongue. In no way had she been ready to see the true starvation I endured or how it had to be quenched.
Had she not grown so fierce, she would have been terrified.
Each breast, those perfect, delicious tits, were worshiped. Wide, burning palms pressing them into her body, kneading the flesh, claw teasing the nipple so it might be sucked.
She screamed no. She screamed yes. She screamed for more.
She even screamed my name.
Right as I held up the monstrosity of my cock and lined it up where she was wet, aching, and owed. I told her I was going to fuck her for three days straight and offer no succor.
Not to my wife. Not to my queen. Not to the other half of me, the better half. The half
