This night can’t end without me giving it to her there, too.
I slide out of her, watching as a gush of my seed trickles from my tip. She rises up onto her knees, turning to stare at me.
Hand on her nape, I push her chest into the back of the couch, and grab my erection. “I’m giving it to you everywhere, Thali.”
“Holy shit,” she whispers under her breath, hips arching back.
Inviting me.
Doubt she’s a virgin there. Not with her experience.
And I just pissed myself off all over again.
I press my swollen tip to her tight hole, spreading the moisture around.
Then I’m sliding into her there, something I’ve never done with another woman before, and it’s like the last of my civility is stripped from me.
It’s so wrong.
So dirty.
So forbidden for someone like me.
I love every fucking bit of it, especially how hard she’s strangling me with that grip. I can barely thrust into her, but there’s no fighting the urge, no stopping myself.
Athaliah whimpers my name and reaches back to sink her claws into my thrusting hips. “Give it to me. Oh God, please baby, give it to me.”
That’s all it takes.
A few thrusts and her begging me.
My body is empty. It’s a miracle I have anything left for her. The last orgasm is a short, brutal affair that’s over almost as soon as it starts.
It’s also the most intense of them all.
Mouth open on a silent shout, I shake behind her, near quaking.
I think at some point I pass out.
Lids heavy, I force my eyes open. I’m on the floor and Thali is over me.
Are those tears streaking down her cheeks?
“I should’ve never gone into that church.” She smooths her hand over my wet brow and it’s then I realize how cold I am. “I should’ve never laid eyes on you. I’m so sorry, Logan. I wish I could’ve spared you.”
What is she talking about?
Why am I so cold?
Better yet, why can’t I move? Can’t speak either, I realize when I open my mouth to ask her these questions.
“Please forgive me.” She lifts my upper body off the floor as if I weigh nothing and lays my head on her chest; I’m a limp rag doll in her preternatural grip. “I wish it could’ve been another way. That you weren’t human and could handle it.”
That I wasn’t what?
Then again, it makes sense. This is a Succubus holding me in her arms and crying for me.
“I’ll make sure to get you back there before you take your last breath, okay? I’ll get you back to the church. You’ll die among your God.”
It’s the last words I hear and as that primal darkness encroaches I finally realize why I’m freezing like this.
It’s because I am dying.
Chapter Eight
“You’ll die among your God.”
“You’ll die among your God.”
“You’ll die . . .”
Her prediction didn’t turn out to be literal, but it ended up being true all the same.
Her.
Athaliah.
That horrifying, yet perfect dream apparition that forever altered my life.
For a dream she was, no matter how real I thought her to be those first few days after awakening in my room.
The sun had been beaming through the windows, the air lighter than I’ve ever felt it. My body was rejuvenated—dare I even say reborn?—and I’d felt an unburdening of my soul that was near biblical in its proportions.
As if God himself had reached inside me and ripped out every atom of guilt I was carrying for so long.
Which makes no sense. I had every reason to feel guilty.
That first morning, I believed to have awoken from a night of wild sex with a sexual demon.
A night where I betrayed every aspect of my religion.
It sounds insane, I know. Yet it took me a few days to realize it wasn’t real.
As the other priests and the nuns told me all about my unexplained illness, and how I spent days on my bed, mumbling feverishly in my sleep.
I still don’t know how to explain how I feel about that.
She was a dream.
A hallucination.
Athaliah was never real, and those moments I shared with her were nothing more than a figment of my sick imagination.
Of course. I mean, come on. Demons, Stigmata-like symptoms, Succubi?
Another betrayal of my faith, I guess, but I never truly believed it could be real, and this proves it.
Whatever virus overcame me and dragged me into the most hellish corners of my mind, all it managed to do was bring forth a series of realizations that I wasn’t ready to face.
If I am to stop betraying God and everything our religion stands for, it’s time I start being honest.
With myself.
With my Lord.
With everything.
He did condemn me to that sickness, but only to open my eyes. Within that twisted mind-trip, he made me see reality for what it is.
I’m not meant to be a priest.
Never was.
I took this vocation out of grief, to honor my dead brother, when it was never meant for me.
I’m meant to serve the Lord in other ways.
No idea what my new calling will be, only that it starts with this.
It starts with walking away.
It starts with me facing life out there and seeing where it—where he—takes me.
Pausing at the door, I turn and take in my bedroom one last time.
I was only a priest for two years.
A rector for even less.
I still have no idea how I ended up in such a position. At the time, it had seemed like pure divine guidance. As if God had wanted me here, when much older, more experienced priests were more deserving than I was.
Perhaps he did.
He works in mysterious ways.
This is meant to be a part of the larger picture of my story, however it ends.
This experience will forever live with me. That much I know.
That peace remains—yet so do the images of my dream girl, Athaliah.
Knowing she isn’t real actually hurts me more than walking away and leaving this life behind.
Maybe I subconsciously missed having the freedom, the chance, at love?
Too
