Chaos Unlocked

by Lana Kole

  Bringing him back to her center, she sighed at the comfortable weight of him on top of her. With a nudge of his hips, he slid inside her in one thrust, she was so wet from his torture.

  Her eyelashes fluttered, but she was focused on his expression, and wasn’t disappointed. The muscles of his jaw clenched and his eyelids slammed down over his eyes, his head going slack on his neck as he groaned. The sound did something to her and she grinned at him, even though he couldn’t see her.

  Then he began to move, and the smile slid right off her lips as he retreated and returned, his hips meeting hers. Bringing her knees up higher, she framed his hips and lost herself in the movements of the pleasure.

  He’d worked her up and left her hanging by some evil method of torture, over and over again, and she was already rising higher by the second even though they’d only just begun. With each bump of their hips, he slid inside her a bit harder, and then he grabbed her hip and slid his thumb over her clit, letting their motions rock her up into his hand.

  She soared—until she didn’t, and she cried out, the sound almost a sob as she fell back to the ground, only to start the ascent again.

  “It’ll be good, trust me,” he rasped out, and her jaw dropped open.

  “Are you doing that?” she growled, exasperated and desperate.

  His sloppy grin made her heart clench. “It’s the best misery.”

  Her hands rose to his shoulders, gripping hard, nails raking over his flesh. “Just let me come,” she begged. “Please… ”

  He must have recognized the crazed edge in her voice, because he nodded and planted his hands on either side of her head. Then he began to truly fuck her—hard.

  Just the way she needed.

  The cry from her lips must have been the confirmation that he needed, as his hips slammed into her over and over again, the sounds of their flesh meeting loud in the closed room.

  Sounds, words, white noise fell from her as she rocked herself up to meet him on each plunge, grinding his pelvis against her clit.

  And without his taste of misery there to hold her back, then, and only then, was she able to let go—to shatter and soar and fly apart at the seams.

  As she clamped around him, he cursed, and she felt him slow his thrusts as she dug her nails into his flesh from the ecstasy.

  When the light had barely subsided, all but aftershocks, he picked up the pace again, fucking her into the cushions until she came again, this time with a scream. She clutched around him so tight she felt him swell as he fought back the orgasm. Framing his face with her hands, she pulled his unfocused gaze to her own, and kissed him sloppily, their tongues twining for a moment before she pulled back, his hips still pumping into hers until she gasped.

  “I want to make you feel so good that misery’s the last thing on your mind.” His eyes widened at her words and she purposefully tightened her muscles around him until he groaned. The beginnings of an orgasm swelled within her and she cried out, “C-Come with me, dammit!”

  Maybe it was the desperate edge in her voice, or the clutch of her around him, or maybe it was all just too much, but he finally gave in. With a shout, he came, his eyes fluttering shut as he shared her ecstasy—his warmth spilling inside her and filling her up. He stilled above her, their hips barely rocking as the aftershocks coursed through her body.

  His eyes fluttered open, only the sounds of their breath loud in the room. Their lips met in a single, sweet kiss before he collapsed beside her, pulling her over on his chest as their heart rates settled. The heat faded along with her flush, the air in the room cooling the sweat on her skin and she tugged the blanket over them.

  Daria didn’t know what to say. Well, thanks popped in her head, but she didn’t think that was appropriate, even though that’d been the most intense sexual experience of her life.

  “You weren’t even this quiet when you first realized we were real,” he observed, and she laughed against his skin.

  “I just don’t think my brain’s working yet,” she admitted.

  “That means I did my job right.”

  “Understatement of the century. I didn’t know you had tricks,” she mused, glancing up at him from her place on his chest. A shiver danced up her spine at the memory of her climax at the edge of her fingertips, yet unreachable.

  With a hand behind his head, he was the epitome of relaxed. “Like I said, it’s the best form of misery.”

  She didn’t have anything to say to that, so she remained quiet, until the silence of the room and the wetness between her thighs became too much.

  “This is nice and all, but… ” She winced and pointedly glanced down at herself.

  “Right.” She could sense he was hiding a smile, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from the look on his face.

  Her blush returned as she imagined walking back out into the room with the other demons and… her father.

  “Oh God, what’d I do?” she whispered in horror, turning an open-mouthed look to Misery. “We gotta go back out there,” she stated, as if it just dawned on her.

  As if he couldn’t resist, he leaned in and kissed her, distracting her from the embarrassment of the attention awaiting them. She’d forgotten everything, name included, by the time he pulled away.

  “What?” she asked dazedly.

  “Get dressed,” he told her.

  And she did, wincing in mortification as she had to slide her pants on sans underwear, since she’d used them to clean up. There was something so much more intimate in dressing in front of someone, rather than the reverse. Maybe it was the knowledge—the reminder—that putting their clothes back on meant they’d come off in the first place. And that anything after had changed… everything.

  “We match now,” she joked, before she hit the button to open the theater room.

  His gaze darkened as he surveyed her from head to toe. “Don’t remind me,” he growled.

  Her stomach flipped at the look in his eyes, before she cleared her throat and turned to the great room awaiting them.

  When they stepped out back into the entertainment area, her eyes widened.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” she shouted.

  TRUTH

  He nodded as Daria led Misery to the little movie room across the way. From the way he gripped her hand so tight, Truth knew he must have been holding on by a thread to his sanity. To his own misery.

  She’d take care of him though, Truth knew that much. He’d watched them that night in the club, across all the dancing bodies and strobe lights. Even through the fog and the noise, he’d witnessed the connection they had, the draw she had on Misery, and the swirling darkness within him that drew her closer.

  Wonder where that leaves the rest of us, he pondered as he turned back to his brothers.

  Then other thoughts invaded. Other worries. If Daria was the daughter of Chaos, that meant…

  Before he could voice his thoughts aloud, Chaos himself reappeared, with a joint balanced between two fingers as he inhaled, the orange tip flaring harshly in the moonlit room.

  “Now, now. This isn’t a time to worry,” he said, and Truth didn’t even get a chance to ask what he meant.

  He exhaled, releasing a huge cloud of smoke into the air, and just the scent of it was enough to relax Truth’s shoulders.

  By the time the smoke evaporated, Chaos grinned at them before materializing back to his spot across the room.

  Truth glanced at the other demons and tried to remember what he was going to talk about, but the thought wouldn’t come. Betrayal was already relaxing by the fireplace, and since Chaos had claimed the waterfall, and Misery and Daria the theater… he guessed he had no choice but to join the surly demon.

  Though, he supposed he wasn’t so surly at the moment, what with their new freedom and all. Blood stained the back of his neck where they’d dug the tracker out. He sipped a dark whiskey with his boots propped up on the ottoman across from him.

  As Truth sat down and helped himself to the decanter o
f alcohol, something seemed… off. It didn’t feel right, sitting here, relaxing. There was something more important to remember, to talk about—the thought left him instantly. Every time he tried to go back to it, it slipped out of his grasp like grains of sand through his fingers.

  Shaking his head, he sank back into the chair and made himself comfortable, content for the moment to let his thoughts escape.

  Not so surprisingly, they turned to Daria. He could only imagine how exactly she was comforting Misery, and it would be a lie if he said he didn’t wish it was him.

  And Truth never lied.

  But they were good for each other. His dark called to her light. They balanced each other out.

  Death and Hope joined them, interrupting his train of thought, until they were all situated in their chairs around the fire.

  Chaos appeared too, that damned cat still in his lap. “So. Pandora’s Demons,” he chuckled. “Tell me how you got out.”

  Truth couldn’t help but say it, his tongue loose from the drink… probably.

  “Daria got killed.” A flash of rage colored his vision red as he remembered living the death through her eyes. Stabbed to death, it was a brutal way to go. Violent. Cruel.

  Chaos didn’t seem to like his words, his eyes narrowing. “I suppose that means Sam is dead too, yeah?”

  “Yeah, you’d have that correct,” Death muttered into his drink.

  “How’d she die?”

  Why is he asking this? Wasn’t chaopadós…

  The thought left him again, all the implications alongside it, and when Chaos turned his dark eyes on him, Truth couldn’t help but answer. “Car accident. Or so we first thought.” And then he shook his head. Why was he sharing all this information?

  Chaos lit up another of those joints, smoking quickly and apparently forgetting his manners, since he kept blowing smoke in their faces. One leg crossed over the other, cat lounging in his lap, orange tip flaring as he sucked down the smoke, Chaos was the epitome of relaxation.

  “Where are we?” Hope asked, his brows furrowed low in confusion. He pointedly glanced up. “There’s no moon, yet it’s lit like moonlight.”

  Sighing, Chaos took another drag. “You’re a stubborn bunch aren’t you?” He exhaled with his words, the smoke drifting from his lips as he spoke.

  “This is my paradise. There’s more to it, but this is the entertainment room.”

  Truth glanced around at the simple scenarios he had set up. “Seems kind of boring. I mean, what’s entertaining about a fireplace?”

  Sure it was warm, and the pop and crackle of the embers and sparks was comforting, but entertaining? Nah.

  At Chaos’s chuckle, Truth arched a brow his way, and he answered with a smirk. “The room isn’t the entertainment, demon. It’s the guests.”

  “What the hell’s that mean… ” Betrayal growled, his words trailing off when Chaos turned that smoke in his direction.

  “So, tell me more about Sam. Car accident, you say?”

  Death’s voice was low and dangerous as he glared at Chaos. “What more is there to say? It was a freak accident. All there was to it.” His tone brooked no arguments.

  One side of Chaos’s lips quirked up. “What, Death? You bummed ‘cause you didn’t get to hold her hand through it?”

  Death stood, and put a new meaning to if looks could kill as he stomped over to Chaos and tore the blunt out of his hand, smacking it to the side. “Don’t speak of her as if it’s all a joke.”

  When he sat down, Hope surprised them all by speaking. “That woman gave even me hope for the future, so don’t you dare sit there and disrespect her.”

  With an arch of his brow and a snap of his fingers, another lit joint appeared between his lips. Then he held his hands up and apart in a surrender gesture. “Chill out, man. I’m just curious.”

  His eyes followed Death as he retreated to his seat, who took a long drink from his glass, still glaring daggers at Chaos.

  To be honest, it rankled Truth too, the way he wanted to pry into Sam’s death. Something caught at the back of his mind and tried to hold on, to crawl its way to the forefront so he could put an end to this charade and find out what was really going on, but he lost it again.

  Instead of yelling in frustration like he wanted, he frowned at his drink before taking another sip.

  Then another distraction altogether appeared—Daria and Misery were emerging from the theater room. The circular wall encased itself back into its storage, leaving the projector screen and loungers and loveseats open to the room. They stopped just outside, eyes bugging out.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” she shouted, before she stomped across the room. At first, the angry set of her shoulders and frown on her face worried Truth, but the closer she got, to them, to the smoke, to the comfort of the fire, the more relaxed she became. Until she and Misery stood side by side. Their faces still flushed, hair a mess, it was clear what they’d been doing.

  Once again that little niggle of jealousy spiked, but he pushed it down. Misery looked better than he had in a long time, but—

  “Daria! Come dance with good ole’ Dad,” Chaos shouted happily, as he passed the blunt to Betrayal before standing.

  Betrayal frowned at the white stick between his fingers before he shrugged and took a hit, that orange tip flaring to match the embers of the fire before handing it off.

  Truth took what was passed to him as he kept an eye on Daria. Misery frowned at them before he stepped aside, catching Daria’s eye to make sure she was okay. She nodded and then turned to her father, her movements stilted, awkward even. Which was fair. The thought of meeting your dad for the first time, one who happened to be the oldest thing in existence, had to be a little weird.

  Though he had to admit the girl had seen her fair share of weird shit lately. Between dying, coming back to life, hearing voices that turned out to be demons…

  Music started playing, and he glanced over from passing the smoke to see Daria and Chaos dancing. It was a basic slow dance, and from what it looked like, Daria managed to keep plenty of space between them.

  That didn’t stop Chaos from having a conversation with her, and oh, what Truth would give to be able to hear what he said that put a line between her brows.

  A joke between his brothers pulled him back to the present, and he momentarily forgot about the dark-haired girl with ocean blue eyes and a voice like a siren’s song.

  But not for long.

  DARIA

  The last thing she expected when she and Misery left the theater was to see her demons getting comfy with her… father. And passing a joint around, no less.

  But the closer she walked toward them, seeing the smiles on their faces as they laughed with each other, smoke beginning to fog the room, the less she worried about it. Or anything.

  Shaking her head, she hesitantly stepped toward Chaos as he asked her to dance. She couldn’t quite find it in her to tell him no. And there was music after all, so why not?

  Daria couldn’t lie—she’d always been curious about who’d donated the other half of her DNA.

  “So, you’re the Chaos demon, huh?” she asked nonchalantly, as if she wasn’t burning with curiosity.

  “No, no. I am the Chaos.”

  Squinting at him, she dared to question, “What’s the difference?”

  He seemed thrown by her question. “Well, in the beginning, there was just the void. Me. Chaos.”

  Someone’s full of himself.

  “What about the other gods? Zeus and stuff?”

  “I came first. They were here much, much later.”

  “You’re like… super old then, huh?”

  He glared down at her before he caught on that she was kidding. “I see. You’re humorous. You must get that from me,” he mused.

  Rolling her eyes, she glanced to the guys again, but his voice pulled her back to their conversation.

  “Your demons speak very highly of your mother,” he mused.

  “Yeah,
probably. They were with her for like forty-five years.”

  “I suppose that’s a long time, in human years.”

  She chuckled through the pang that lanced through her heart. “Yeah, I suppose compared to someone as ancient as you, that’s a blink of time.”

  All humor fell from his face as she gazed up at him, their feet moving in time to the music that played around them. Flutes and string instrumentals danced through the air, paired with a soft beat to keep the pace. Such light music for a backdrop to the suddenly frightening grin on his face.

  “I’m Chaos. Time, space, nor fate apply to me. And as my daughter, they don’t to you either.” He spun her around before bringing her close to brag in her ear. “We’re above all that.”

  His words seemed to snap something inside her, and she shook her head to clear the fog. Some of it dispersed, but her thoughts were still sluggish as she struggled to keep them in order. “Then why did you need a cult to worship you?”

  Surprise flushed his cheeks as he nodded at her. “Saw right through that, did you? About time.” She made to step away, wanting this haze to burn away, but he pulled her closer and gripped her hand tight. “Nah-ah. You have questions. Ask them.”

  With butterfingers for a thought process, she grabbed on to the first thought that caught her attention. A dark alley, a glint of metal. “Why did the cult have to kill me?”

  Nodding, as if judging the question were fair or not, he said, “To get the demons out, of course. It was some plan they cooked up—the ultimate sacrifice. Unleash Pandora’s demons into the world to wreak havoc. Little did they know I don’t give a rat’s ass about the humans. Nor did I know the next in Pandora’s bloodline was my own daughter.”

  “So you didn’t know about me? At all?”

  “Not sight nor sound, until I saw you in that hallway.”

  Daria took a deep breath and asked the question burning a hole inside her. “And you knew because… ”