Wings

by Sandra R Neeley

  Only minutes later it started. At first just several groups of a dozen or so, then without warning, it was like the rocks themselves exploded as thousands and thousands of bats spilled from exactly the spot Jaime still pointed at.

  Jaime didn’t watch the bats, he watched the woman at his side. She was filled with wonder, filled with excitement. And he wanted her filled with him.

  Ruby looked away from the bats and met his eyes. Her mouth open in amazement, her eyes bright, her smile huge. “Oh, wow!” she said, before turning her attention back to the colony still exiting their caves.

  Some time later only a straggler or two flew over head. And still Ruby searched the night sky for more. “That’s it. They’re pretty much gone for the night,” Jaime said. “They’ll return a few at a time until they’ve all returned home. But the big show’s done, for tonight at least.”

  Ruby looked at Jaime. “Thank you…” she paused, not knowing his name.

  “Jaime. I’m Jaime.”

  “Thank you, Jaime. That was amazing.”

  “You’re welcome.” He was still sitting close to her, where he’d moved to point out where to look.

  Ruby could feel his body heat, smell his skin in the heat of the night. The excitement of the night still had her heart pounding. Ruby looked into his eyes and felt like she was under a spell. Jaime looked right back into hers and seemed to be under the same spell. Slowly he leaned toward her, brushed his lips against hers, once, twice.

  Ruby’s tongue slipped out to taste his lips as they brushed hers and that was all it took. Before he knew it, he’d slid a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her into him. Covering her mouth with his own as she opened to his searching, tasting, teasing tongue.

  Jaime moved up onto his knees, using both his hands to pull her face to him and keep them connected.

  Ruby wrapped her hands around his biceps and held on for dear life as he pulled more emotion from just that one kiss than she’d experienced in all her life.

  Slowly Jaime pulled back, his eyes dropping to her lips before raising to her eyes again. He licked his lips, wanting more, needing everything.

  “I want more,” she whispered.

  Jaime grinned and nodded, then slammed his mouth down on hers again, wrapping her hair around one hand while using his other to pull her forward onto his lap as he fell back on his ass.

  Ruby helped by climbing into his lap as he pulled her there. Once she was where he wanted her, he let go of her hair and then his hands were everywhere. Her breasts, her waist, her hips, cupping her ass and pressing her against him as he rocked his hips up into hers.

  Ruby had a hand full of his own hair and was holding on for all she was worth as she held his face steady with the other hand.

  Jaime maneuvered her into a better position for him to force his body between her legs. He pulled her to him and turned, laying her on her back. He came down on top of her, rubbing himself against her.

  Ruby moaned, lifting one leg and looping it around his waist.

  “More!” she demanded, grasping his ass and pulling him to her while she ground her pussy against him.

  “Fuck, yes!” he growled out.

  Jaime reached for the button on her shorts and tore them open. The button popped off and flew away into the dark.

  Jaime watched it go. Then he froze. All movement stopped on his part. He lifted his head and cocked it to the side, his wide, slightly flat nose flaring as he sifted through all the scents around them.

  Ruby, still caught up in the intensity of their encounter, was still tugging at his clothes, pressing herself against him. He turned his head again, trying to see into the darkness. Someone was there. He could feel them, he could see them — yet not in the standard sense of seeing. He could sense their body, almost feel their outline, their heat signature, yet not see the actual being. But it was enough for him to know that they were not alone. They were being watched. And the being watching them wasn’t human.

  “Ruby…” Jaime started.

  She didn’t answer, just lifted up and dragged her tongue from his collar bone to his chin.

  Jaime moaned. “Ruby, baby, you gotta stop. We can’t do this.”

  “Of course, we can,” she answered, squeezing his ass.

  “Ruby!” he said sharply.

  Ruby jerked at the tone in his voice, looking up at him like he’d lost his mind. She realized that he wasn’t looking at her, rather he was looking at a space off to their left, somewhere between them and the rocks.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I’m not sure. But we can’t do this now. Come on. Stop touching me! Let me help get you packed up.”

  “But…”

  “Now! Ruby.”

  Ruby let go of Jaime, and shoved away from him. She fully understood changing your mind halfway in. No meant no, no matter when it was said, or whether it was the man or the woman saying it. But he didn’t have to be such a dick about it. She slid her legs out from under him and hopped down off her Jeep. She zipped her shorts up and tried to button them, but the button had been torn off. Didn’t matter, she’d sew another on tomorrow.

  She grabbed her ice chest and her tamales and shoved them through her open passenger side window. She walked around the front of her Jeep and pulled her blanket.

  Jaime was still sitting on it, looking off into the distance.

  “Move. I can’t get my blanket if you’re sitting on it.”

  Jaime looked down at the blanket and hopped off the hood of the car.

  Ruby pulled it toward her again and reached out once her pistol was within reach, snagged it and put it in the back waistband of her shorts and rolled up the blanket and tossed in through her open driver’s side window.

  She pulled open her door and got inside. She started her Jeep and thought about just driving away, but she couldn’t do that. She just wasn’t that mean, not even to this asshole of a guy.

  “Do you need a ride?”

  “No. I’m parked nearby. Just go home. And don’t stop on the way. Keep that gun handy,” Jaime told her.

  “Bye,” Ruby responded and threw the Jeep into reverse, stepping on the gas.

  Jaime jogged two or three steps after her Jeep. Watching her tail-lights as she drove away from him. He felt like shit. He could feel her confusion. He knew she thought he decided he didn’t want her, and he hated that. But he had to get her to safety. And if she was pissed off at him for that, then so be it. He heard movement behind him and turned to face whoever it was.

  Still far enough away to not be sure he was actually seeing it or not, Jaime saw a tall, dark creature. He looked like he was wearing a long, black leather duster. Jaime squinted, then closed his eyes. Yeah. He knew this one, knew him better than most. And the leather duster wasn’t a duster, it was wings. Huge, black, leathery wings he wore about himself as though he was clothed in them.

  “Stay away from her, Tyrisey.”

  The creature didn’t answer. Just silently regarded Jaime.

  “Did you hear me? Stay away from her.”

  The creature moved closer, his head tilting first to the left, then the right, the eerie yellow-white glow of his eyes easily seen in the night. “Why should I, Jamisey? She calls to me, and I to her. I knew the moment she set foot on our grounds that she’d arrived.”

  “She’s not for you, Tyrisey!”

  “It has yet to be seen,” Tyrisey said, a sinister smile in place on his slightly furred face. “She is enamored of our cousins, brother. Surely she’d be enamored of me as well.”

  “Stay the fuck away from her, Tyrisey!”

  “Why?”

  “Ruby is mine! Leave her alone, or you will regret it,” Jaime threatened on a snarl.

  “Ruby. Hmm. Like a precious, fiery jewel. Perhaps Ruby is more than you can handle.”

  Jaime lunged, jumping for Tyrisey, but Tyrisey took to the sky just in time. “Farewell, brother. I shall see you soon.”

  “I’ll kill you!” Jaime s
houted at the night sky.

  “Would that you could, Jamisey. Would that you could,” Tyrisey said softly, circling the human on the ground below once before flapping his great wings and lifting himself up and over the tallest spire of the rock caves. Moments later he set himself down in what appeared to be a wide open dusty area, filled with nothing more than cactus and scrub plants. He turned and looked at the large rock formation behind him. He knew that Jamisey wouldn’t follow him here. Jamisey wanted nothing more than to forget him. Forget their grandfather, their heritage, the customs and old ways of their people, Jamisey was free to forget everything. And since Jamisey was the twin born with human features, he was free to walk among the humans. Free to forge his own way. Free from the maniacal ways of their grandfather, while he himself was trapped in an empty life of nobility. Groomed from early childhood to take on the role of Most High Prime upon the death of his grandfather.

  Tyrisey hated his life. He hated his grandfather. He hated the loneliness that had permeated his entire existence since his mother and father had left him with his grandfather and returned to their lives with Jamisey when they were both small babies. But mostly, he hated Jamisey. Jamisey had gotten to grow up with their parents, loved and nurtured, living the charmed life of a human while he dwelled below ground, in the coldness and isolation that was his life, hating his own reflection, his own person for not being enough to be loved by his own mother. He thought of Ruby again. He hadn’t lied - the girl did call to him, he’d felt her. And surely that meant they had a connection, otherwise he wouldn’t be so aware of her. But apparently, she called to Jamisey as well. Whether or not she was meant for him or Jamisey, or even both, didn’t matter to him. What did matter was that Jamisey believed that she was meant for him, which is why he would take her for himself. He’d take her, mate her and lock her away in his world forever so that Jamisey would have to think of her in his brother’s arms, in the darkness, in the cold wet ground, every single day of his life. Tyrisey grinned, his long, slender fangs shining in the moonlight. Jamisey got their parents, but he would take the woman Jamisey coveted. “Fair trade,” he said aloud, before brushing the sand aside from the camouflaged opening in the ground with his massive wing. He shoved the large flat stone aside, clearing the opening, and dropped down below ground and out of sight.

  Chapter 5

  Ruby pulled into the parking lot of the diner. The lights were on, but there were only a few cars in the parking lot. She paused in getting out of her Jeep and rolled up her driver’s side window. Then she got out and walked to the back of her Jeep. She lifted up the hatch to reach in for the potted plants she’d bought. Ruby grabbed two and placed them one on either side of the front door. Then she grabbed another one and pulled open the front door stomping inside.

  “Mildred, I got you some plants. There’s two more outside the front door.” Ruby plopped the plant down next to the register and stomped back outside.

  She walked around to the passenger side of her Jeep and rolled up the passenger-side window. She gathered all her bags of food and the ice chest with her bottled water and walked around the outside of the diner to her place out back. She unlocked the door and let herself in. She gave up finding her way in the dark and dropped everything she was carrying on the floor except the ice-chest. That she held in one hand as she walked forward, waving her arms in front of herself while feeling for the pull attached to the single bare bulb in the room.

  Feeling it brush her fingers, she grasped at it and pulled. Light shone down from the ceiling fan, and she glared at it before setting the ice-chest down exactly where she stood and heading back out to her car. Ruby grabbed the last two plants, locked her car and went back to her room.

  Ruby put the plants outside, one on each side of her door and closed her door, locking it against anyone who may want to enter. She was in no mood to talk to anyone. She picked up her bags of tamales, pies and fruit from the floor and placed them on the table across the room. Then she moved her ice chest to the center of the same table, and as an afterthought, put her tamales on top of the ice inside.

  Then she kicked her shoes off, stripped off all but her panties and bra, turned off the light, and lay out across the bed in the dark.

  “Men suck,” she mumbled to herself. She wasn’t as upset with Jaime as she was with herself about being so upset with Jaime. She’d had many, many interludes in her young life. Sex was healthy, it was natural, and if both parties agreed that’s all it would be, there was no harm in it. She’d never been in love, didn’t want to be in love. She loved sex, and that was enough for her. Why, then, did Jaime’s rejection piss her off so badly?

  She reached a hand out patting her other pillow for Rufus. She pulled him in and snuggled him to her face. “Love only brings hurt, Rufus. Remember that and we’ll be just fine. That and men suck. Except for you. You’re pretty cool.”

  Ruby snickered a little at her conversation with Rufus.

  She heard a noise outside and stopped talking. She lay perfectly still for a moment, straining to hear. Just when she’d decided it was probably a patron from the diner who’d gone out the wrong door, there was knock at hers.

  “Wrong door! Go back around to the front,” she called out.

  There was another knock.

  “Wrong door!” she shouted again.

  “No, it’s not. Open the door, Ruby.”

  Oh, well, hell no. She certainly wasn’t opening the door now. “Go away, Jaime.”

  “No. Open the door, Ruby.”

  “No.”

  She heard some shuffling and a few footsteps, then her window was being lifted. She sat up in bed, watching incredulously as her window raised. “Stop opening my window!”

  “Technically — it’s my window. And no. You won’t open the door. I’ll talk to you from here.”

  “Go away! I don’t want to talk to you at all! And it is not your window, it’s mine. I rented it. For the whole month. With an option to stay longer. So, go!”

  “No. I need to talk to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Too bad,” he said, trying to lift himself to the window’s edge.

  “You’re never gonna fit through that window. And I’m not gonna call anyone to help you get unstuck, either. I’m just going to leave you hanging there and drive away.” She reached for her phone and snapped another picture of him trying to climb in through her open window and hit send, shooting this one to her sister as well.

  “Come on, Ruby. Open the damned door!” he finally shouted, giving up on trying to fit through the window.

  “No!” she shouted, stalking over to the window and slamming it closed, locking it from the inside.

  Ruby closed the other window and locked it too, then lay down on the bed again.

  It wasn’t long until she heard pounding outside. Sounded like the fool was building something this damned late at night. But she refused to open the door and see what he was up to.

  A few minutes later and silence was all she heard. Then, sonofabitch, a key turning in a lock. Her door opened and a man’s footsteps stomped across her floor. She heard the click of the light pull turning on the light bulb, and Jaime stood there, grinning at her triumphantly.

  “I got a spare,” he said, smiling and holding up his key ring with about thirty keys on it.

  She glared at him for a moment, before just shaking her head and throwing her arm over her eyes and ignoring him.

  “I need to explain about earlier, Ruby.”

  “I don’t need to hear it. Go away.”

  “Not until you understand.”

  “Does the sentence, ‘my room, I rented it, not you, go away now,’ mean anything to you?”

  “No. Now, listen,” he said, taking a seat on the side of the bed and scooting her body over to make room for himself. “It’s not that I wanted to stop.”

  “Well, you certainly had no problem stopping!”

  “I had to!”

  “Why? You got
a wife? A girlfriend?”

  “No! Of course not. I just felt like we were being watched.”

  Ruby sat up. “You did?”

  “I did. And I needed to make sure you were out of there and safe before I explored it.”

  “Oh. Well, then why were you such a dick about it? You didn’t have to be so mean, ya know!”

  “I wasn’t a dick. I’m not a mean person.”

  “Yes, you were, and you’re about as surly as they come.”

  “Bullshit. I’m not surly. I just got shit to tend to, and everybody needs to do what I need them to do so I can do me.”

  “Yeah, ‘cause nobody’s bullshit is as important as yours.”

  “Yeah. No! That’s not what I meant.”

  “Whatever, Jaime. Just go away, please.” Ruby lay back down and flung her arm across her eyes again.

  Jaime sat there, not moving. Not speaking, just looking down at her. She had her arm thrown over her eyes, doing her best to ignore him. And her pale skin was all laid out before him, sweating in the heat from the room. Flushed from, was it the heat, or their earlier little petting session?

  Ruby pulled her arm away from her eyes. “Why are you still here? What do you want?”

  Jaime pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and bit it, letting it slide slowly free. “You.”

  “What?”

  “I want you, Ruby. I wanted you back there at the caves, and I want you now.”

  “The mood is shot, just go home.”

  “I am home.”

  “No you’re not, I’m home.”

  “Ruby…”

  She went to jump up from the bed and confront him, but he grabbed her and pulled her down on his lap, holding her tight to him as he rolled his hips against her.

  “Been a long time since I wanted any woman, Ruby. And I want you. You feel me? You feel how bad I need you?” He rolled his hips again. “You tell me you don’t want me and I’ll let you go. I’ll walk away from here and leave you alone tonight. But you wanted me before. I know you did — you were begging for more. Demanding it. Well, you’re safe now. And I’m ready to give you everything you want. Just say the word.”