by L. A. Banks
Sarai gave him thrust for thrust. Each time they pushed, his huge penis rubbed against her clitoris, providing her with voluptuous pleasure. So rich, so fine, that she instinctively knew that nothing this sublime had ever before existed this side of heaven.
It was his love for her, shining in his eyes, that was the strongest aphrodisiac. That, and the fact that he’d long since learned just where to touch her to make her body sing.
She came, a strangled scream escaping.
He didn’t hold back. He yelled with his release, his voice reverberating off the shower stall walls.
Sarai laughed. “You sound like a Chimera demon.”
“Have you known many of them?” Daniel asked, amused.
“Not in the biblical sense, but, yes, I’ve known a few.”
Chapter Two
* * *
“How long is he in town for this time?” Edina Shaw, Sarai’s mother, asked.
Sarai and Daniel had gone to her parents’ Lincoln Park apartment for Sunday dinner. The judge, Sarai’s father, Andrew, and Daniel were in the study discussing politics while she and her mom, who taught philosophy at Northwestern, saw to the meal.
Sarai, dressed in a fitted navy skirt suit with a white silk blouse, and expensive black leather pumps was bent over the oven removing a pan of vegetarian lasagna.
“I really think you should give the man who made you a grandmother a break,” she said. Sarai carried the steaming dish over to the counter and set it atop a wooden cutting board. Her mother was staring at her, mouth agape. “When did you find out?”
“I haven’t been to a doctor, but I know my body. I’m pregnant. I’m not going to tell Daniel until after he returns in time for the holidays. It’ll be his early Christmas present.”
Her mother, a tall, shapely woman with skin the color of roasted almonds and dark eyes like her daughter’s, pursed her lips. “You’re only waiting because you don’t want him to change his schedule. Which you know he’ll do if he finds out you’re expecting. You’re pregnant. You deserve to be selfish for once in your life. Tell him now, and let him spoil you.”
Edina walked over and hugged Sarai. “You know we don’t have morning sickness and tender breasts like humans. Your libido will increase and you’ll have disturbing dreams.”
“So far, I’m not having any symptoms at all,” Sarai told her. “I’m hoping they won’t begin until after Daniel gets back home. It’s only a few weeks’ wait.”
“A lot can happen in a few weeks,” Edina said. “God made the world in less time.”
Sarai frowned at her mother who’d been born with the gift of prophecy. Was she trying to say something bad would happen if she didn’t tell Daniel she was pregnant right away?
“You don’t see anything, do you?” Sarai asked worriedly.
Her mother smiled at her reassuringly. “No, baby. It’s just experience talking. Husbands don’t take well to wives keeping secrets, and vice versa.”
Sarai was about to say that she was certain Daniel would forgive her anything once she gave him the news he was going to be a father, when her own father stuck his head in the kitchen doorway, and said, “Feel like a little bout before dinner, baby girl?”
Sarai immediately began taking off her apron. Turning to her mother, she said, “Mind if I borrow a pair of your athletic shoes and your sword?”
“Of course not, honey,” said Edina, smiling.
This was just like old times when Andrew, who had been both Edina’s and Sarai’s fencing instructor, would challenge one or both of them to a match at the drop of a hat.
The library, which was in the center of the house, was soundproof in order to mask the loud clashing of their heavy swords. They didn’t want the neighbors calling the police to complain about barbaric swordplay in their exclusive building.
Sarai hurried to her parents’ bedroom to raid her mother’s closet, giving Daniel a smack on the lips as she passed him. Daniel, looking handsome in black dress slacks, a white silk shirt open at the collar and with the sleeves rolled up, and black leather wingtips, only smiled.
In the three years since they’d been committed to one another and Sarai had divulged everything about herself and her family, these bouts had become common occurrences.
He understood that they were not just for fun. Although they were certainly fun to watch, they were a necessity. Traditionally, disputes between Nephilim were settled with a sword fight. And every Nephilim had to be capable of defending himself.
He watched Sarai as she sprinted away, eager to get changed and meet her father in the library. Andrew reached over and affectionately squeezed Daniel’s shoulder. “You really should take lessons, too, Daniel. One day, you’re going to be the father of a half-Nephilim child. He’ll grow up in the human world and the Nephilim world. He’ll need to be taught.”
Daniel smiled at Andrew, who was a couple inches taller, and in excellent physical condition for a guy who had to be nearly two hundred years old. He looked around fifty. His black, curly hair only had gray at the temples.
“I’m a boxer, not a fencer. Sarai will have to teach him or her how to fight the Nephilim way.”
Andrew smiled patiently as they walked slowly to the library. Edina had outpaced them and was already in the large wood-paneled room when they got there. A couple of minutes later, Sarai entered the room. She’d removed her jacket and her pumps, replacing the pumps with a pair of her mother’s athletic shoes. The soles of the shoes gave her better traction on the hardwood floor of the library. In her hand was her mother’s personal sword. It was a three-foot long broadsword made of polished steel and it weighed two and a half pounds.
Her father also wielded a broadsword, although his was heavier by half a pound.
The play area was twenty by thirty feet. Daniel and Edina sat on the arms of the leather couch that had been moved to the corner of the room. Sarai and Andrew faced one another in the play area.
As was tradition, each of them held their sword firmly in their hand, the tip pointing heavenward. Eyes momentarily closed, they kissed the broadside of the sword.
After which, it was on. Andrew, believing his daughter’s mind was not entirely on their bout, lunged and aimed the first thrust at her left shoulder. Sarai, anticipating his move, met his thrust with a parry, and sparks flew as steel scraped against steel.
This sort of sword-fighting was not as civilized as fencing. Foils with blunted tips were not allowed, and there were no rules to speak of.
Andrew was six inches taller than Sarai and about fifty pounds heavier. He did not go easy on her because to do so would be shortchanging her. Always, in the back of his mind, was the thought that if he were remiss in her training, it could very well cost her her life should she actually be challenged to a duel.
Andrew aggressively advanced, forcing Sarai to retreat. “Where is your mind?” he shouted above the noise of the swords clashing. “You know my style of fighting better than I know the back of my hand. What am I going to do next, now that I have you on the run?”
You’re going to get cocky any minute now, Sarai thought. Then, you’re mine.
“Talk me to death?” she said to her father with a smirk.
Andrew didn’t like her impertinence. She was joking while he was trying to teach her a valuable lesson, how to read her opponent.
Angry, he raised his sword to deliver a mighty blow. Sarai blocked the blow, her sword raised high, as well. As they leaned in close to one another, grimacing, muscles straining, swords ominously scraping together, she suddenly slipped underneath his raised arms and kicked his legs out from under him.
Andrew fell backward, and Sarai held the tip of her mother’s sword at his throat.
“Never fight while you’re mad, if you can help it,” she said sweetly. “That’s the first lesson you taught me.”
Andrew burst out laughing.
Sarai helped him to his feet, whereupon Andrew attacked her again.
Edina rose from her perch on the
arm of the couch. “I’d better go make sure dinner doesn’t burn. This might take a while.”
Daniel acknowledged her words with a nod of his head, his eyes on Sarai and Andrew as Sarai executed a stylish riposte in response to her father’s thrust. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. A thin layer of perspiration covered her glowing brown skin. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration. She looked hot. It must have been the athlete in him, but Sarai never looked sexier than she did when she was engaged in physical combat. He couldn’t wait to get her home.
“Tell me again what the prophecy says about me and Sarai,” Nighthawk said to the wizened sorceress.
He sat in a dank, cold room far underground in the oldest cemetery in Chicago. The mortuary boasted the remains of some of Chicago’s finest families. Of course, death being the great equalizer, the dead rich were no better off now than the dead poor.
The woman’s face crinkled in irritation. “For what? You won’t take my advice, anyway. Four years ago, I told you to marry her, and you ignored me.”
Nighthawk blew air between his lips. He’d committed murder for lesser insults to his intelligence. Unfortunately, the woman was of his bloodline, and one of the Sons of the Morning.
Nighthawk tried not to kill blood, if at all possible.
“Just tell me, woman!” he said irritably.
“The prophecy says that through her you will sire a son who will be the most powerful Son of the Morning Star to ever walk the earth,” she said this so softly that Nighthawk had to strain to hear. Her beady eyes were insolent when she raised them to meet his.
He leaned forward. “Give me the other half.”
“Or, she will be the death of you.” Humor sparkled in her eyes now.
Nighthawk pounded his hand on the stone slab that served as a table for the woman’s many candles. Candles fell over, and hot wax spilled onto the stone slab. “Why are prophecies always so damned ambiguous? Either she will make me great through a special son, or she’ll murder me? Is God so facetious?”
“You know the answer to that,” the woman said with a cackle. “You’re down here consulting a witch. It certainly didn’t do Saul any good when he had the witch of Endor summon the ghost of Samuel in order to ask him for advice.”
“Are you saying your advice is no good?”
She shook her head, pity evident in her expression. “My advice is what it is. I told you what I saw in your future. I can’t be sure whether the information came from above or below. My receptors aren’t what they used to be.”
“You’re a Son of the Morning Star,” Nighthawk said. “Your allegiance is to Lucifer.”
“Yes, but what if Lucifer’s allegiance isn’t to me? We both know that we’re living on borrowed time. We haven’t been tossed into the lake of fire yet because it pleases God to carry on this experiment. It’s an age-old question: Did he kick us out of heaven to spend eternity on earth in order to punish us, or to give us the opportunity to change our ways and return to the fold?”
“What you’re saying could be ruled seditious if it got back to Lucifer,” Nighthawk warned her. “You talk as if we have that option. We don’t.”
She cackled again. “I’m nearly four hundred years old. I don’t care what he thinks. It’d be a mercy if he would put me out of my misery. Besides, no punishment Lucifer could devise would be as horrible as an eternity of being separated from God. I know!”
Nighthawk abruptly stood up. He placed a rolled up wad of cash on the stone slab. Even an old witch had expenses. It couldn’t be cheap to keep her crypt livable.
He looked at her again. She didn’t even try to maintain the illusion of youth. She obviously didn’t care that she looked like the Crypt-Keeper’s sister. The skin on her face was so papery thin, her skull was in sharp relief.
No wonder she didn’t go out in public anymore. The humans would have a field day with her. Imagine, they thought that a one-hundred-and-fifteen year-old woman who had died last year had been the oldest living human being on earth.
She turned her rheumy eyes on him. “Why don’t you kill me? I can’t change the prophecy. It is such as it is. I’m of no further use to you.” She sounded hopeful.
“Sorry, I didn’t bring my sword,” Nighthawk said with a note of apology. “Maybe next time.”
He quickly got out of there. Cemeteries gave him the creeps.
A few minutes later, he stepped outside into a bright Sunday afternoon. His stride was confident as he hurried to his Jaguar. He knew what he had to do now.
Sarai and Daniel were barely inside their apartment before they started undressing each other. “I’m not leaving until tomorrow afternoon,” Daniel said. “Take the morning off so we can spend it in bed together. This has got to last us for nearly a month.”
“You mean phone sex isn’t leaving you satisfied?” Sarai joked. She’d gotten his shirt open, now, and bent to kiss his hairy chest. She licked his nipples.
“Baby, you know phone sex is never as good as the real thing,” Daniel said as he grasped her face between his big hands and kissed her sweet mouth.
Sarai, being a multi-tasking kind of gal, was busy unbuckling his belt and slipping her hand inside his pants to lay hold of his hardened penis. She felt him throb in her hand.
Daniel moaned with pleasure and raised her skirt. Pantyhose and panties were dispensed with in a hurry, pumps with them. In an instant, they found themselves in a passionate clench on the foyer rug, Sarai on her back with her legs wrapped around him. Daniel was on top, giving her the full length of his manhood with every flex of his powerful leg, butt, and thigh muscles.
Sarai arched her back, welcoming him deep inside of her. Her golden-brown breasts, full and round, their tips hard, beckoned Daniel. He couldn’t help touching them, gently twisting the nubs, which heightened her pleasure.
He momentarily bent to lick her nipples, the taste of her skin delicious to him. This added sensation made him swell even more. Sarai felt it at once. Her body was so attuned to his that even a minute change was detected by her. His penis pressed against the walls of her vagina.
She felt the urge to push harder and did so. Daniel, whose first desire when making love to her was to give her all the pleasure she could take, pushed, but slowly, making certain she felt every inch of him.
Soon, though, he could no longer hold back and both of them were in the full sensual grip of lust. He pulled her closer and pumped her with long thrusts, his penis pulling almost out of her and going back inside, feeling cooler to her each time due to momentarily being in the air. Sarai, as athletic as her husband, gave him back thrust for thrust.
Daniel was watching her face intently. He loved observing her when she was close to orgasm. Her eyes changed colors. Usually a very dark brown, the irises turned the color of brandy and the pupils turned a fiery red. Everything about her fascinated him.
As he watched, her eyes changed colors. He felt her vaginal muscles contract at that very instant, and knew she had cum.
With the knowledge of her completion, he came seconds later. He held her in his arms a few moments before rising and helping her to her feet. “We haven’t done that in a while,” he said jokingly of their lovemaking on the foyer rug.
Sarai craned her neck, trying to see her backside. “I’m gonna have rug burns on my behind.”
Daniel laughed. “Probably on my knees, as well. But it was worth it.”
The next day, Sarai didn’t go to work until after Daniel had left for the airport. Dressed in jeans, a sweater, leather jacket and her favorite motorcycle boots, she rode the elevator downstairs, daydreaming about their lovemaking earlier that morning.
She sighed happily as she stepped off the elevator and right smack into Nighthawk’s chest. His theme was black: a designer suit and overcoat, and sharp designer boots.
Sarai peered curiously up at him. “What are you doing here?”
Then, she saw the moving men, loaded down with boxes, coming into the building. Beyond the glass doors stoo
d a semi-trailer belonging to a local moving company.
Her eyes narrowed as she regarded him once more. “You’re moving in?”
“Lovely and astute,” said Nighthawk, flashing white teeth roguishly.
Other residents were coming into the building, and getting off the elevator behind her. Now was not the time to get into a heated conversation. She yanked him away from the bank of elevators and around the corner. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Armaros. But, quit it, I love my husband and your moving into our building isn’t going to make me leave him for you.”
Nighthawk inclined his head. An amused expression sat in his black eyes. “My moving here has nothing to do with you, darling. I simply wanted a different venue. I’m tired of that big, old drafty penthouse. I wanted something homier. The apartment I’ve chosen is a tad smaller and down the hall from you and that rain-on-newly-mowed-grass smelling husband of yours.”
Nighthawk had crashed their wedding. He hadn’t made a scene, but his being there had been intrusive enough for Sarai. When he’d shaken Daniel’s hand at the reception she hadn’t known then that he’d been sizing him up. Remembering his smell.
Nephilim often joked about how they could smell a human’s soul and know what type of person he was. Nephilim didn’t have a detectable scent to one another. To the Sons of the Morning Star this was further evidence that God had stripped them of souls when he’d banished them to earth. Grigori thought that reasoning was ridiculous. Nephilim didn’t have a scent because they were more angel than human. To them, it was proof that they were closer to God in genetic make-up, than to man.
But Sarai didn’t have time to talk politics now. “Just stay away from me and Daniel,” she warned, preparing to leave. “This is a free country. As far as I’m concerned, you can live anywhere you want. But you’re not allowed to encroach upon my privacy! Stay out of my life, Armaros!”
“Of course,” Nighthawk said calmly. “I would never impose on anyone. But should you get lonely in the middle of the night, remember that I’m just down the hall. I would be more than happy to accommodate you.”
