Serpent's Storm

by Amber Benson

  I felt guilty. No, worse than guilty. I felt wicked and wrong for having these kinds of not nice thoughts, especially while the person I was having said “not nice thoughts” about was lovingly stroking my rib cage with his index finger and making my toes curl with happiness as he lay across my bed, his warm head draped on my exposed stomach.

  “Nothing,” I finally replied, glad he couldn’t read my mind.

  He lifted his dark, tousled head and raised an eyebrow thoughtfully.

  “You’re thinking about something.”

  He rested his head against my collarbone so he could kiss the curve of my neck at his leisure, all the while stroking the flat part of my belly with his hand.

  I had a hard time thinking logically whenever Daniel was touching me. As his hands roved over my body, I felt an electric shiver race from my stomach to my breasts, leaving a tingling feeling in its wake. Daniel knew what his hands were doing to me and took full advantage of the situation, running his fingers up between the smooth flesh of my rib cage then cupping one globe of trembling flesh and pinching the pink nipple so hard, I cried out in pleasure. Arching my back so the length of his body and his cock were pressed against me, I opened my mouth, willing his lips to find mine. He took the hint, letting his mouth trail light kisses across the hollow of my neck, up the smooth incline of my jaw, all the while using his fingers to lazily stroke my captured nipple until it was hard as a rock.

  “Oh, God,” I moaned. “You feel so good.”

  He liked that. I could feel him smiling against my mouth before he slid his tongue in between my lips and devoured me.

  “Wait!” I said, sitting up so abruptly Daniel was forced to release me from his embrace, or risk smacking his head into the headboard in recompense.

  “What?” he said as a frown creased his brow.

  “I can’t do this,” I barked at him, pulling the covers off the bed to conceal myself with. Apparently, I’d chosen this very moment to purge all the poisonous thoughts that’d been building in my head ever since he’d shown up at my door and started harassing/sleeping with me.

  “Do what?” he said, looking perplexed as I wrapped my naked self in the comforter and crawled down to the bottom of the bed, trying to put a little distance between me and his naked (i.e., distracting) man parts.

  “We shouldn’t be having sex anymore,” I replied lamely. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, sitting up and, thoughtfully, putting a pillow over the distracting man bits. “I thought we liked each other . . .”

  He trailed off, scrunching his forehead in confusion. I closed my eyes, trying to buy myself a little time. I didn’t really want to have this conversation, but the relationship couldn’t keep going the way it was going or else I was gonna tear my hair out in frustration.

  “Look, I don’t want to be a bitch, but you are seriously buzzkilling our relationship,” I began.

  “Excuse me?” Daniel interrupted, grabbing a pair of boxers off the floor where he’d dropped them the night before and slipping them on.

  “You talk about the same stuff over and over again and it’s hard for me to feel like anything other than a conduit to Heaven—”

  “I can go there without you anytime I want, Callie. I thought it would be more effective if we put the request in together.”

  “Oh,” I said, looking down at my hands. This was a new piece of information. “Well, then, I think you should just go now and then I’ll go later—”

  “Callie,” Daniel said, his voice taut with feeling, demanding my attention. I looked up, expecting to find a scowl on his face, but he was only gazing at me with a quiet intensity, his countenance broadcasting nothing but sincerity.

  “I know all of this is hard for you, Cal,” he continued. “And I’ll go to Heaven without you if that’s really what you want, but I’m not gonna let you push me away without a fight.”

  “Huh?” I said, feeling as if the rug were being pulled out from under my feet. Here I was trying to tell him why he was ruining our relationship, and instead, he was turning it all back around on me.

  “You push people away,” he said, reaching out and taking my hand. “Especially when you’re scared. I know I’ve been trying to force you to deal with the promise you made to Cerberus, but if you’re not ready to do it, then I won’t press you anymore.”

  I gulped, uncertainty distracting me from my righteous sense of anger.

  “But we don’t even get along . . .” I babbled, my brain searching for more words to bolster my argument, but not finding any.

  “I think we get on great,” Daniel said as he lifted my hand to his lips and softly kissed my knuckles.

  “In the sack maybe,” I replied, the words sounding rude even to my own ears, but I was feeling the pull of his physical nearness and I hoped rudeness would stave off attraction.

  “You don’t really mean that,” he said, a grin stealing across his face.

  “I do, too.”

  He turned my hand over and kissed the delicate flesh of my wrist, making my heart flutter pitifully.

  “No, you’re just scared, so you’re putting together all kinds of irrational arguments in your head. You’re such a girl.”

  “Whatever!” I said, resenting the implication. I might be a girl anatomically, but I hardly ever acted like one—well, at least I thought I hardly ever acted like one. But now Daniel was starting to make me feel uncertain about that, too.

  “Yeah, I know you pride yourself on being surly,” Daniel laughed, “but you’re just a big marshmallow underneath it all.”

  I smacked him on the arm, but he used the opportunity to grasp my wrist and leverage me toward him, the covers slipping away as he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close. He smelled yummy, like cinnamon and cloves, as he slid his hands over my breasts, cupping them and making me squirm.

  “See, I told you we get on great,” he whispered as he nuzzled my neck, peppering kisses across my collarbone.

  As much as I wanted to disagree, I found that I couldn’t. My body had betrayed me, giving in to the lull of sex as Daniel slid has hands between my legs, his fingers slipping wetly inside me. I moaned, knowing the argument would have to wait for another time, because pleasure was what my body craved now. I gave in and kissed him, our tongues entangling while his fingers worked me like a harp, sliding in and out of me, faster and faster, until I could hardly contain myself. I was in agony, on fire with the need to feel him inside me, but when I reached for his cock, he crawled on top of me.

  “I want you to feel good,” he said, nipping at my earlobe, then his lips roaming down until they found my breast, kneading the nipple taut with his teeth. I couldn’t breathe, my brain overwhelmed by a warm, tingling sensation deep in my belly.

  “You’re gonna make me . . .” I moaned, my voice thick and drugged with sex as a wave of pleasure hit me, and I cried out, my back arching in ecstasy, his slick cock thrusting inside me while I climaxed. The orgasm was overwhelming, taking over my entire being with its sweetness, my body trembling as I fell against him. A moment later, he came inside me and I clutched his body tightly to my own, not wanting to ever disentangle myself from his embrace. Spent, I could hardly put together a coherent thought, but as he collapsed on top of me, I knew I was utterly satiated by what we’d done.

  “Feel better?” he whispered, and it took all the energy I had left to nod my head “yes.” “Good.”

  I wanted to close my eyes and go back to sleep, but my eye caught the face of the digital alarm clock on my bedside table and I nearly choked. It was almost time to be at work and I had left myself zero time to shower before I got dressed. I was just gonna have to be late; I reeked of sex, and a shower was the only cure.

  Ugh.

  “I gotta go,” I said, pushing myself up onto my knees.

  “You don’t have to go,” Daniel said, but I ignored him as I crawled off the bed and began searching for my robe.

 
“I’ve told you a million times, if I’m late for work—”

  “Hyacinth will have your head,” Daniel finished for me.

  “Exactly,” I said as I dragged the robe from its hiding place under my bed, slipping it over my shoulders before making a beeline for the bathroom. Worried about being late and getting my head bitten off at work, I didn’t even take the time to say good-bye.

  “I’ll miss you, Cal . . .” he called after me, but he didn’t make a move to stop me—and I was too preoccupied to notice the hurt look on his face.

  Funny thing was, when I thought back to that moment, the only thing I remembered was the sense of finality I felt as the bathroom door clicked shut behind me. Little did I know then that the next time I saw Daniel, two people I loved would be dead and my whole world would be utterly changed forever.

  two

  New York in the late fall is a beautiful thing. It marks the beginning of scarf season, when people start hauling out their heavy winter coats from the back of the closet, digging up mittens and earmuffs from the bottom drawer of the wardrobe where they’ve been hibernating during the off months. All across Manhattan people shut their windows against the cold, cranking their thermostats up as high as they’ll go, daring Mother Nature to catch them if she can.

  I loved walking in the fall air, my breath a frosty wreath in front of my face as I marveled at the beauty of my chosen home. I loved the city with a passion, the way it made me feel as if I’d been thrust into the teeming heart of humanity and, at the same time, left utterly to my own devices. It was easy to blend in with the crowd here, to escape into the monotony of urban life and not think, just react.

  I loved that I could walk or take the subway wherever I wanted. Or if I was feeling particularly blasé about my finances, I could hop in a cab and take it all the way uptown. There was so much to see here, so many people to interlock my fate with. For me, it was enough just to stand underneath a canopy of skyscrapers and breathe the salty, human-scented air.

  Of course, there were bad things about the city, too, but like a love-struck schoolgirl with a myopic view of the thing she adores, I revered what I wanted about the city (and myself) and ignored the rest. I pared away the bad parts until all that was left was a fantasy world. One I could float through without really having to be engaged in what was going on around me. A place where I could be and do whatever I wanted without being judged by anyone—even when I majorly screwed things up.

  In the summer, New York City was stuffed to the gills with people walking, talking, and eating. It was only as the air crisped and the leaves in Central Park started to change their color that the cacophony died away and the city began its preparation for the long, hard winter to come. The fall was that happy time between the two extremes, when people were still out on foot—albeit wrapped up to their ears in outerwear, not half-naked like in July and August—enjoying the outdoors and knowing full well as soon as the first snow fell, even they would be taking refuge indoors, where it was warm and toasty.

  I personally didn’t mind the cold because it was a very good excuse to trot out all my winter goodies. Today, as the wind whistled down through the construction site and the row of street vendors camped out next to the subway stop at Canal Street, I was wearing a thickly woven Prada scarf I’d gotten as a gift from my sister Clio on my last birthday. It was light gray and went splendidly with the purple plaid knee-length skirt, gray tights, and creamy charcoal leather cropped jacket I’d gotten at H&M the week before.

  I know shopping at H&M might be seen as slumming it a little, but I was seriously learning that relaxing my rigid “designer only” policy was freeing to both my pocketbook and my psyche. My jacket may not have been culled from the finest lambskin money could buy, but it looked supercool and was definitely within my price range—no need to forgo lunch for a week because I’d plumbed my bank account of every last penny to buy it, either.

  Clad in my Swedish import best, I may’ve looked like a discount fashion plate, but I was so not feeling the love on the inside. I was running late from an aborted lunch experiment, and I knew if I didn’t make this train, I was gonna be up shit creek without a paddle. My boss, Hyacinth Stewart, was a complete and total taskmaster. She’d just as soon put my bloody head on a pike as dock my meager pay if I wasn’t back at my desk—butt in chair and furiously answering e-mails—by one o’clock.

  I didn’t know what I’d been thinking, going so far downtown for lunch, but I’d read on this fashion blog about a new restaurant that’d opened in SoHo—and happened to be coowned by three supermodels of late nineties’ fame—so I was exceedingly curious about getting a look at the place. Of course, you needed reservations months in advance just to have a drink at the bar; still, I had an hour to kill for lunch and I was more than willing to pop by and see if I could worm my way in for a look-see.

  I’d had to settle for stargazing at the struck metal and glass sign on the front of the building—no supermodel action on the agenda for me that afternoon. I did spy a couple of polished-looking women in Armani who I thought I recognized from the society section of W magazine, but they only stopped on the sidewalk long enough to coo over the Pinkberry two doors down, completely ignoring the fashionable new restaurant I’d been obsessing over. After that, my highly annoyed stomach had growled three times in quick succession to remind me it needed feeding, and I’d grudgingly given up my spot in front of the restaurant I obviously was not gonna see the interior of, grabbing a chicken shawarma pita from a Pakistani street vendor I passed as I trudged back toward the subway stop.

  For some reason luck was with me. I ended up elbowing my way onto the subway platform just as the train arrived. I slid in and immediately found a seat—which should’ve clued me in that something was amiss—because I never find a seat on a crowded train. Usually, I end up mashed underneath the armpit of some really tall, grubby guy with incredibly strong body odor, so this was a rare treat.

  “Hello, Mistress Calliope,” I heard a melodious male voice whisper into my ear.

  I jumped in my orange plastic subway seat, spilling tahini sauce all down the front of my shirt.

  “Dammit, Jarvis!” I choked, pulling a Kleenex from my purse and quickly wiping at my shirtfront. I sighed when I realized there was no helping the beige stain now front and center on my white sweater—and the Kleenex I was using to dab the stain was only sloughing off and making it look even grittier.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked through gritted teeth, looking over at my father’s Executive Assistant, who was sitting primly on the seat beside me, fiddling with his pocket watch. He was wearing a fitted blue wool blazer with gold buttons, no pants, and a pince-nez perched precariously on the end of his aquiline nose.

  “I am here to force you into finally making good on your promise,” he replied in his clipped British accent. “Since you obviously were not going to come to me, I had to come to you.”

  “But here? On the subway? Right now?” I glared at him, hoping he’d at least put a spell on himself to prevent anyone of the human persuasion from noticing the cute little goat haunches he happened to be sporting.

  Oh, did I forget to mention Jarvis is a faun who prefers to go around without pants—regardless of the fact that not wearing pants is tantamount to sharing entirely too much information about one’s self with people one does not know?

  No one sitting or standing near us seemed to have noticed that a supposedly mythological creature was hoofing it on the subway with them, so I relaxed a little. The last time Jarvis had been spotted out in public, it had been by a little boy at a Starbucks and it had almost caused a scene.

  “I think the time is ripe to make the introduction you promised me,” Jarvis said, interrupting my train of thought and ignoring the look of surprise that overtook my face.

  “Oh that,” I said, relaxing as I realized Jarvis wasn’t here to badger me on Cerberus’s behalf. The promise he was referring to was of a more personal nature.

&nbs
p; “Yes, that,” Jarvis replied, getting all persnickety.

  “But now?” I repeated, no witty rejoinder finding its way into my head and out through my mouth.

  “I’ve had my eye on the lady in question, and I feel if I am ever going to act, I must do it now,” Jarvis continued, his thick black eyebrows raised in consternation.

  He may have been a faun—a half-man/half-goat whose human torso balanced precariously upon cloven-hoofed lower extremities right out of the barnyard—but he was still a pretty handsome-looking fellow. He had a head of thick black hair he kept carefully pomaded in place, a Tom Selleck mustache that would be considered “sissy” on anyone else’s face, and dark, luminous eyes that were always keyed in on exactly what I didn’t want them to see. Still, where human women were concerned, I had a feeling his smaller stature—Jarvis was no taller than four-eleven on a good day—and lack of human-looking equipment downstairs might preclude him from catching the eye of the lady he was enamored with at the moment:

  Namely, Hyacinth Stewart, my power-monger boss.

  I’d graduated from Sarah Lawrence with a degree that prepared me for absolutely nothing. Sure, I knew what the term “postmodern feminism” meant, but I’d had no idea how to roll calls or make an Excel spreadsheet. I was woefully unprepared for my first foray into the workforce—despite the fact that I was starting at the bottom rung of the ladder, in what could only politely be termed an “entry-level” position.

  You’d think a chimp could do my job (I’m the Executive Assistant to the Vice President of Sales at the aptly named House and Yard—the company that brings you all the house and yard crap you see at three in the morning on the Home Shopping Network), but you would be sadly mistaken. Dealing with the whims of a highly neurotic boss who wants nothing more than to make my life a living hell is not for the banana-slurping constitution of a primate.

  Opposable thumbs or not.

  I respected Hyacinth for her astute business acumen, but I had loftier goals for myself. I wanted to work for Vogue—or any other fashion rag that would have me—so I was kind of annoyed by my boss’s unwillingness to promote me or, at the very least, put in a good word with one of her publishing diva girlfriends. I just knew she had the connections to give me a leg up if she wanted, but ever since I’d heard through the grapevine—the grapevine being my fellow Executive Assistant in crime, Geneva—that Hyacinth actually liked having me around, I’d known there would be no plans for advancement in my future.