by Aya DeAniege
She leaned forward as I leaned down. As we kissed, I began moving. Slowly and carefully, I thrust into her, using the wall to brace myself. Grace wrapped her legs around me, drawing me closer. The pace may have been slow, but that did not mean that it lacked sensation.
Her flesh surrounded me, hot and tight as I moved. I knew I was doing right by the way she seemed to clench around me. Hands digging in, legs tightening. Her teeth nipped at my bottom lip suddenly as every bit of her stiffened.
I paused there, unmoving as she vibrated against my length.
“Please,” she begged me.
For a long moment, I remained still. I remained in control as I breathed out, trying to get a hold of myself.
Then I withdrew as far as her grasp would allow me and slammed back into her as she cried out. That moment of orgasm was almost uncomfortable. She was entirely engaged in my ministrations.
As her orgasm rolled through her, I continued.
I had been focused on her, I hadn’t realized just where I was in the entire event. The motions simply came naturally, so naturally that it wasn’t until my orgasm burst through me that I realized what I was even doing.
Banishing means they come, not me.
My vain girls were about getting on, then getting off. Forcing a demon out meant that the victim of possession had to orgasm, not us.
Sometimes we did it, or more of, sometimes Gabe did it. Once or twice I had done it because it couldn’t be helped.
For the most part, though, we never orgasmed with someone who was possessed. It wasn’t fair to them. All that was necessary for them to survive and be clean was for them to come. We didn’t even have to be the cause of the orgasm, we just had to make certain they did orgasm.
Grace was not possessed.
I came.
Inside of a woman.
Who hadn’t been possessed.
Is this what an existential crisis feels like?
Our foreheads were pressed together as we both panted. The realization hit me and stole my breath away. I sighed out and pulled away, letting Grace down.
She looked away, wouldn’t meet my eyes as I stepped back and into the water.
“That wasn’t what I was planning,” I said, reaching out to pull her under the water with me.
“Oh?” she asked.
“I was going to use the head on you,” I said. “That’s all it was going to be, but I just couldn’t help myself, watching you move like that.”
I should have been able to, though. I should have known what my reaction would be.
“Then why do you look upset?” she asked, turning her back on me.
I think she was pretending to look for the soap, which was beside us on the little shelf on the wall. I grabbed the soap and reached around her, handing it to her before I wrapped my arms around her. The motion gave me a moment to compose myself.
My problem was that I had orgasmed with her. The others may have had sex with her, but none of them had done that. After that long working in the physical plane, we could… Turn it on and off. Or would just excuse ourselves and deal with the problem in the bathroom.
One learned to fake the motion. There was something about the male orgasm that many women found quite arousing.
But then, I also found the female orgasm much more arousing than my own. I could understand the perspective, a little.
Which was why Michael claimed he was still clean and new. As near as any of us could tell, he had never orgasmed.
As in ever.
Though, he was also very adept with finger and tongue and preferred to use those methods to his cock.
“Don’t laugh,” I grumbled.
“I won’t,” Grace said in a tone that strongly suggested she was about to shove that bar of soap into my mouth.
“I came,” I said.
“What, and then kept going?” she asked.
The half-truth would work, I supposed.
I bent my head, nodding as I kissed her shoulder. Better to claim that I was early out of the gate rather than admit the truth.
“You can still perform like that after you’ve come?” she asked, her voice going higher and higher with each word.
“It’s basic physics,” I managed to get out.
“Most men just stop,” she said.
I reached out and grabbed the wand, spraying her front as she squeaked and tried to bat me away. I held her tight and slipped the wand between her legs. Grace struggled like one being tickled, but my grip was firm, my footing good. The soap popped out of her hand, clattering against the wall, then down around her feet as it slid about.
I made very certain to keep my feet firmly on the tiled floor as that soap bounced about and she struggled against me. If I didn’t keep my grip firm, she’d be bouncing about the floor like that soap.
We avoided sex in the shower as much as possible, because it was dangerous. Slippery surfaces and all.
Fighting with a woman who was struggling against me, on a wet surface, was difficult. Most of the women I played with in the shower simply laid against me and took it, and then I did it to shut them up before kicking them out the door.
Grace stiffened against me. I brought the wand away, then closer again, repeating the motion as she seemed to seize each time I moved the water, in time to how it grazed over her. She reached back and grabbed a handful of my hair as she cried out loudly.
Despite the yank to my scalp, I kept the wand there another moment, then reached over and set it on the hook where it belonged.
“Be nice, or get the wand again,” I rumbled to her.
“I was nice,” she whispered breathlessly, her hand still tangled in my hair.
There were a great many things a man could say in such a position, even snarky things I might say. But I swallowed my pride and chose not to point out the pain in my head.
“Oh, I know,” I said with a grin. “I just wanted to see how you’d writhe against me, pleading for more.”
Grace made a sound that was almost a laugh. I slipped her around in my arms, drawing her toward me. I bent and retrieved the soap, then lathered it up on my hand and used my hand and the soap to wash her skin. She smiled just barely at me as I continued, only hesitating when my fingers slipped between her legs. She may have stiffened, but my fingers probed only enough to clean her thoroughly.
I wanted to be certain about cleanliness.
Though, according to the others, women of the modern era did a much better job at cleaning themselves than centuries before.
My vain women did not receive such attention from me. I didn’t care if they were washed because they were gone as soon as I was finished with them.
For her, though? I cared. I wanted her to be clean, because that saying about cleanliness and God was true. A clean body was a healthy body, was a longer living body.
I then stepped back, giving her the space to rinse off as I began to wash my skin. I noticed how she watched my hands, following the lather on my skin sliding down my side and over my hip.
I’ve played that game before.
Though, in the past, I’d been in a bathtub full of water, or in a stream even. A woman had stumbled upon me and been caught up in my looks.
It became a game then, but I had never been that exposed before. From the hips down, I had always been covered. Before. Right then, I felt like I was exposed to the whole world, even though it was just Grace and I in my bathroom.
And there were no cameras in my bathroom.
I lathered up and then began to wash slowly. Over my chest in small circles with the bar of soap as my free hand began rubbing over the other side of my chest idly. My hands slipped ever downward, across my abdomen muscles and finally my belly button.
Grace’s eyes followed that bar of soap all the way down. She stood in the stream of water numbly, as if forgetting that she was in a shower.
At my hip bone, I turned away.
I made certain that my back was to her entirely when I began cleaning myself. I denie
d her that view, of the bar of soap sliding over my hands, of how I used my lathered hands to clean myself, reaching down and between my legs, stroking at my skin.
As if I were shy, when in reality I was doing it to taunt her.
I washed the rest of myself thoroughly. Making certain that every bit of me was clean and lathered with soap, I turned and stepped into the stream of water, pushing our bodies together.
Then I kissed her, our tongues tangling as she made a small sound. I slipped my fingers through her hair, holding her close as we kissed. The water rinsed the last of the soap from our hot bodies as we continued to kiss. I pulled back slowly, leaving one last lingering kiss on her lips before I pulled away entirely.
I shut off the water as she wavered before me.
“Do you need the wand again?” I asked.
Grace bit her bottom lip and smiled, but still looked away. She shook her head.
“Huh, seems I can satisfy a woman,” I said casually as I walked away. “Can also make them all kinds of wet.”
“What?” she squawked out.
“With my waterfall shower,” I said, motioning up with the barest smile. “What did you think I meant?”
She gave herself a shake and followed me out of the shower. I wrapped the first towel around my waist, then took the second and turned to her.
That, I wrapped around her.
“Take your time,” I said quietly. “There’s a robe on the back of the door.”
Then I left the bathroom, closing the door behind me. From the bathroom door, I strolled to the table by the door of my rooms, where I always put my phone. I picked it up from the table and looked at the screen.
“Devil,” Gabe said in text form. “Tell her it burnt down, gas explosion.”
I frowned at the text, then sent back. “Gas explosion?”
“You told Michael anything.”
“Gabe…”
“He did what he had to do.”
“Gabe!”
“No, I didn’t.”
I sighed out slowly.
The problem with Michael using his special skill was that for some reason it always made Gabe want to pick up an instrument and play. The problem with that was that Gabriel controlled the armies of the Heavenly Host.
If he played an instrument, down they came and poof.
The entire Eastern Seaboard—at least, I think that’s what humans called it—would be a smoking crater of Hellish proportions.
“And Ralph?”
“Tending humans.”
“Gabe.”
“Just dispensing first aid. Found a Heavenly Host.”
A picture downloaded. As it popped up, I gaped at it, not believing my eyes.
The man from the restaurant.
Not the one who had been yelling at Grace, but the man who had come tumbling out of the restaurant behind her. He had made eye contact with me. We had been close enough that I should have been able to tell. His kind were messengers. They carried important documents up and down, bringing us our orders.
“Ask him to share, if not, tend him and release.”
“Protect the woman.”
“Woman meaning Grace?”
A long moment of silence, then, “Yes.”
“Tend him and release. Get your and his story straight. Both the same, no deviance from the plot. Grace cannot know. Pay him if he needs rent or anything else, make certain he’s okay.”
“Done.”
“Give me Lilly’s number.”
“Sam.”
“Give it to me.”
“Sam…”
“I said. Give it to me.”
“SAM!”
“Gabe, just do this for me, please.”
“Is she de-demonised?”
“Oh, if she’s not, I’ll end it now.”
Gabe provided the number.
For a long moment, I stared at my phone. It was a can of worms that I wasn’t certain I wanted to open up. For a moment I thought about Grace, about what her being possessed might mean.
I then texted the number with Lilly’s nickname. When she responded with a hearty, “go fuck yourself,” I told her who I was and what had just happened with the restaurant.
“Is she de-demonised?” Lilly asked.
“I should hope.”
“Okay, and?”
Even though it was text based, I heard her voice clearly inside my head. The attitude that woman was giving me? It was enough to bend her over a bench and spank her until she cried.
Oh yes, we hadn’t had sex, but we had had that sort of a relationship.
“Heavenly Host? Another devil?”
Lilly sent an emoji back that looked like a brown triangle. I frowned at it, then sent it on to Ralph with a question mark. His response was quick and to the point. That wasn’t a brown triangle. It was the shit emoji. I frowned at my phone.
The bathroom door opened. I turned as Grace walked out.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Uh, I just heard from my people. The restaurant had a gas leak?”
“What?” she exclaimed. “Is everyone all right? Did they get out in time? What happened?”
“We won’t know until morning, but they’re pretty certain it was just the building that went down,” I said. “Everyone got out. Everyone is safe.”
That was her first concern? Other people?
Other people were assholes, and she was concerned about their well-being. Not her job, or how she was going to make ends meet. She was only concerned about other mortals.
Though, admittedly, she didn’t know that when they died, they either went to Heaven or Hell.
“Thank God,” she said with a little shake of her head.
I wouldn’t thank Him, considering His orders are to kill all humans.
Around a devil? Yes, those were our orders. Unless we were certain that we had smitten the devil back to Hell. Sending Michael into an area was a pretty good way to make certain that a devil went limping back to Hell and stayed there.
If only I knew why two devils had crawled out of Hell and headed straight for Grace.
I awoke the next morning laying on my belly. Shifting my legs under those blankets was an eye opener for certain.
My bed sucked compared to Sam’s.
Enjoy it while you can.
The sheet thing between the blankets and the fitted sheet around the mattress was soft and caressed my legs and body as I shifted. The sheet under me was just as silky soft, almost cool despite my having slept on it all night.
“Don’t get attached. You can’t afford sheets like this,” I grumbled to myself as I groaned and stretched, rolling on the bed to my other side.
“Why? Did my international empire collapse overnight?” Sam asked.
My eyes flew open, and I tried not to appear too surprised to find him sitting in his bed, phone in hand. He peered at the phone for a moment, then turned to me.
I think he was doing work in bed while I slept. It must have been nice, being able to take a few emails while in bed, then relax for the rest of the day and still get paid for it.
“I’m not supposed to offer to buy you things,” he said in an almost bored fashion.
It was either bored, or pouting. I couldn’t quite tell the difference. He was watching me as he spoke, waiting for a response to his comment.
“You’ve been speaking to Lilly, I see.”
Sam seemed to bite his tongue and wince.
“In our defense, your place of work exploded, but you apparently set your phone on silent for the last half of your shift last night. She thought you were dead, then recalled you were going out with me afterward. That was why she contacted me. You know what’s not pleasant?”
“Lilly’s ‘I was worried’ phone call,” I said with a grimace. “I’m sorry.”
“You really won’t accept any gifts?”
“We just met,” I said.
“I get that, but why won’t you accept gifts? Like, if I dropped you off at your pl
ace and later this afternoon a bouquet of roses with a set of sheets just like mine shows up on your doorstep, you’d get angry with me?”
“I would feel uncomfortable at the expensive gift. I get that money isn’t an object for you, but for me it is. People only give you things if they want something.”
“Well, yes, I want your attention,” Sam grumbled with a frown. “I want you to smile. I want you to be happy.”
“That’s not the kind of something I meant.”
“I also want to rub your face in your sarcastic comment because, yes, you could have a set of these one day.”
“I said that I couldn’t afford them.”
“In my experience, those who work the way you do, don’t stay poor their entire lives,” Sam said. “You just need a little boost up, which Lilly tells me you’re getting with your school.”
“Somehow I doubt that my choice of career will get me ten thousand thread count sheets.”
Sam was quiet a moment. He lifted the blanket and looked at the sheet, then set it back down again. Then he picked up his phone and typed something in. I watched him for several minutes, frowning and such as he went through some web pages. Then his eyebrows raised and his mouth opened.
“How expensive are your sheets?” I asked.
“Almost three thousand dollars,” he said. “Someone else bought them. I’m not certain why I need gold threads in my bedsheets.”
“Who bought them?”
“Ralph,” he grumbled. “We need to get you moving to find a new job.”
That was surprising enough to actually wake me up a little. He might have been trying to get rid of me, because I wasn’t being as cooperative as he wanted me to be.
“Oh? Oh…” I sat up, rubbing my face as I did. “Shit, I hate job hunting.”
“Well, what’s your background? Waitressing, have you ever done bartending?”
“No bartending, though I do pick up new skills quickly. I’ve applied for a few of those jobs, but they want you to have the bartending course which is like three hundred dollars, and I can’t afford that. There are lots of restaurants in the city, though.”
“What about cleaning?”
“I’ve done cleaning, both residential and commercial before. Those were both back home. I don’t know the companies here to know how good they are. I’ve job hopped before because I have this issue with people ripping off their workers.”
