Death's Courtship

by Jory Strong

  A discreet sign next to the front door confirmed that he was indeed standing in front of Mabel’s Erotics. Atticus followed the deliveryman inside.

  “May I help you?” a woman who could easily be someone’s great-grandmother asked after she signed for the packages and the deliveryman left.

  Much to his chagrin Atticus found himself coloring under her steady gaze. “I’m sorry, I thought… Given the sign…”

  Her cackle spared him from complete humiliation.

  “Don’t get much walk-in traffic,” she said, stepping away from the desk. “Most of our business is over the Internet but we do have a showroom. Follow me.”

  He followed, docile as a sheep.

  The showroom was small in comparison to the storage and packaging area they walked through in order to get to it. But the shelves and tables were indeed packed with toys for adult fun and games as well as DVDs and books—all existing to serve La Petite Mort.

  “I’ll leave you to look around,” the woman said. She pointed toward a small desk bare of anything except a telephone and pad of paper. “I don’t have any shopping baskets. Put your items over there. Should be plenty of room. I’ve got a few orders I want to pack up before calling it a night and closing. So try to be quick.”

  Atticus breathed a small sigh of relief when she left the room. Certainly he could have studied the display of sex toys and sexual aids under the scrutiny of someone’s elderly grandmother, but he preferred privacy as he examined the items and imagined which ones Bryn and he might find fun.

  It took sheer willpower not to reach for the front of his jeans. He was hard almost to the point of hurting and it got worse when he thought about what he’d read in Bryn’s erotic romance books.

  Bondage. Anal sex. He’d start there since his time was limited.

  Lubricant. That was easy enough and he remembered seeing it in the grocery store as well. He selected two different types before moving to the display of restraints.

  The choice fed his imagination. Arousal seeped from the tip of his penis as he studied the various items. There were cuffs, tethers, all in varying lengths and materials, some designed specifically for power sex and position mastering.

  Stick to the basics, Atticus thought, selecting soft wrist and ankle restraints.

  Items in hand he turned to find Sammael leaning against a display of cock-shaped vibrators. “Married life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be I take it. I’ve always worried about that. It’s a shame given the curse we live under. And the sex life? It already needs spicing up?”

  “I am not going to discuss my private affairs with you.”

  “Affairs?” Sammael gasped in mock horror, staggered backward a few steps before making a slicing motion with his hand at the front of his jeans. “Do I need to remind you that if you use it on anyone but your wife, you lose it?”

  Approaching footsteps spared Atticus from prolonged interaction with his brother. “You have the address for Bryn’s suitor?”

  Sammael provided it.

  “At midnight I’ll meet you there,” Atticus said. The thought of his brothers lingering around Bryn’s building as they waited for him to emerge was enough to give him nightmares.

  “Midnight it is.” Sammael glanced at the items in Atticus’s hands and snickered before fading away.

  Chapter Nine

  Bryn laughed softly when she saw the brown box underneath Atticus’ arm. She’d guessed correctly about his sudden errand. What a romantic he was!

  He gave her a kiss before unlocking the car and opening her door. “Have you been waiting long?”

  “No, just a few minutes.” She glanced at the box, but it was solid brown, without a clue to its contents. “What have you been up to?” Her eyes strayed to the front of his jeans. She knew her smile didn’t hide her appreciation for what she saw there.

  His chuckle drew her attention back to his face. “Let’s get back to your apartment and I’ll show you.”

  Bryn slid into the car and buckled her seatbelt. Atticus closed the door and hurried around to the driver’s side.

  Anticipation made the atmosphere inside the car electric. Need pebbled Bryn’s nipples and sent arousal escaping from her slit. She wondered if they’d make it into her living quarters before they fucked again. Memories of gripping her desk as he’d pounded into her before leaving to see Temperance had her cunt spasming and her heart throbbing between her legs.

  The Aston Martin zipped through town. Red lights yielded to green seconds before they reached them, as if the sex gods needed an offering and planned to feast on the lust between Atticus and her.

  Bryn felt like a teenager who’d just discovered sex and would do anything to get more of it. Her breath escaped in a small pant when Atticus stopped the car in front of her office door.

  She had only an instant to register the vase of red roses left by the front door, to feel dismay when Atticus’ expression told her he had nothing to do with their appearance.

  “Leave them,” he growled and she didn’t argue.

  Somehow she managed to get the door open, to pass through to the living quarters. “This is insane,” she said against his mouth as they tore at each other’s clothing.

  The brown box ended up on the coffee table, Bryn’s curiosity about its contents fleeing as skin touched skin, as tongues twined and tangled. She sighed in pleasure when soft sofa cushions greeted her back and Atticus covered her front like an erotic blanket.

  “I’ve never felt this way about any other man,” she said when he lifted his mouth.

  “Good.”

  He slid downward to her breasts. A moan escaped as he sucked and laved her nipples. Bryn’s fingers tangled in his hair, held him to her.

  White-hot need defined Atticus. It spiked through him in sharp pulses, originated from where his lips suckled at Bryn’s breast and speared his heart on its way to his cock.

  Her scent was heady, a drug so powerful any man would be drawn to it. Her gasps and moans, nature’s primordial call to mate.

  Atticus kissed his way back to her mouth, wanted to swallow her cries as his cock found her wet entrance and pushed inside. Tremors racked him at the exquisite feel of heated, slick woman surrounding his penis, welcoming it in a tight fist of need.

  He could make love to her for centuries and never take the ecstasy of having his body joined to hers for granted. It was indescribable bliss, nearly unbearable pleasure.

  “Bryn,” he said in between hungry, soul-gathering kisses. Words waxed eloquently in his thoughts, sonnets of love, tributes to marriage and the joy to be found in intimacy, but there was no breath to allow their escape, no way to tell her what she was to him without revealing who he was.

  “I love it when you’re inside me,” she whispered against his lips, making control impossible, making his hips thrust once, twice—and then there was no retreat from motion, no stilling to savor a slow joining.

  Thoughts vanished, intentions along with them. Flesh slapped against flesh, the feel of Bryn’s wet core around his cock and her mouth against his becoming his sole reality, all that was important in his life.

  His buttocks flexed as he worked to get deeper. Her cries became more insistent, her hips rising as her fingernails raked his shoulders and her tongue twined with his in a savage mating.

  Harder. Faster. He imagined himself a centaur, half man, half stallion as he pounded into Bryn until her channel clenched and rippled against his shaft and his testicles gave up his seed, forcing it through his penis in a lava-hot rush of release.

  Atticus lay on top of her, trembling in the aftermath, his heart thundering so hard he could easily envision it stopping, casting his essence from the mortal flesh he was wearing.

  “So what’s in the box?” she asked when their breathing had steadied, her question sending a fresh surge of blood rushing to his penis.

  Atticus took her hands in his and held them against the armrest of the couch. He fought the urge to move, to thrust.

  She
was soft underneath him, sated, and yet he knew her passion would rise for him. “I’ve waited forever for you,” he said, taking her lips in an effort to keep from taking her cunt.

  “Atty,” she whispered, the tenderness in her voice as she gave him a private name swelling his heart.

  He slid to the side. Transferred her wrists to one hand so the other could cup her breasts, tease the nipples that made liquid hunger pool inside him so it was nearly impossible to think past the need to suckle.

  He stroked her smooth belly. Brushed his fingers through downy dark curls and over her clit.

  Her thighs remained splayed, inviting as his hand moved lower, trailing through slick arousal and his own seed on the way to her back entrance.

  Contented satiation gave way to eyelashes lifting, face heating in a mix of curiosity and nervousness as his fingertips glanced over the forbidden rosette.

  “Have you ever let a man have you this way?” he asked, knowing instinctively that she hadn’t, feeling a primal thrill at her whispered, “No.”

  His finger lightly traced the tight pucker of her anus and his cock hardened with the thought of being the first, and last, to ever take her there. Bondage games would have to wait, he decided, freeing her wrists and leaving her long enough to retrieve the lubricant from the box.

  Bryn shivered as Atticus squeezed lubricant onto his fingers. His face was so darkly masculine, so full of primal desire that she doubted she could deny him anything he wanted sexually.

  His cocked jutted upward. Velvet skin over steel. Potent masculinity on display.

  She’d joked about him making up for lost time, she would have thought it physically impossible for a man to become aroused so often, but when their eyes met, when desire pulsed between them in a shared wild heartbeat, she knew it was the two of them together that caused him to harden over and over again, not his being a virgin before her.

  A flush stained her cheeks when Atticus’ fingertips returned to her anus. Her buttocks clenched instinctively.

  “We don’t have to do this,” he murmured.

  “I want to,” she said, forcing herself to relax, remembering the first time she’d read about anal sex in one of her erotic romance books and how curious she’d been.

  Additional heat flooded her cheeks when she thought about the toys she’d bought, the ones nestled in the bottom of her panty drawer. Blood rushed to her labia, swelling her cunt lips until they were plump and parted as she imagined having her ass filled with the plug she’d purchased, so that he would have to fight to get into her channel.

  Arousal slid down to help coat her back entrance. Her hips jerked when Atticus rubbed his thumb in tiny circles over the exposed head of her clit, his fingertips massaging the tight pucker of her ass with silky wet strokes.

  “I’m ready,” she whispered after he’d stretched her with his fingers.

  He delayed only long enough to squeeze additional lubricant onto his cock and then he was above her, arms rigid, face strained. As he slowly worked himself in she brought his face down to hers, initiated the kiss this time, lost herself in the darkly erotic act of being taken anally.

  Bryn swallowed his groans, reveled in the way he trembled above her, his strokes short, his body quivering with the intensity of his pleasure. She tightened on him, took him to the edge of orgasm only to have him change the angle of their bodies so he rubbed against her clit with each stroke, made her come before he gave in to his own need for release.

  They showered together afterward. Lingered underneath the warm spray of water. Lips repeatedly touching. Soapy hands following wet curves, exploring the difference between masculine and feminine until teasing gave way to need, to a slow fuck against heated tiles.

  Bryn barely had the energy to pull on a tank top and sweats once they’d emerged from the shower and dried off. “I vote for polishing off the rest of the Cherry Garcia, then crashing on the couch and watching TV.”

  “Perfect,” he said, his smile and his presence filling her with a contentment she’d only dreamed about.

  They didn’t bother with bowls, just grabbed spoons and cuddled together on the couch, her in possession of the ice cream carton, him in possession of the remote control. She groaned each time he settled on a history program. He grumbled when she liked the looks of a crime show. They finally agreed on Planet Earth, finishing the ice cream and watching one episode after another until sleep claimed Bryn.

  Atticus crept from Bryn’s apartment. In the moonlight the roses left in a vase beside her door were the color of old blood, sinister in appearance even to a man who’d once called himself Death.

  A white card rustled in the breeze like a truce flag though Atticus read it as an offer of challenge. He leaned over, uncaring that petals fell to the concrete when he pulled the note from the stem it was attached to.

  I can’t give up on us.

  We can make this work, Bryn.

  I know we can.

  Yours forever, Mark.

  “I think not,” Atticus muttered, picking up the offending vase and carrying it with him to the Aston Martin. It was time to take off the velvet gloves.

  His resolve strengthened with each mile he drove. His aggravation increased as he thought about being forced away from his bride in order to deal with a man who should already have gotten the message she wasn’t available.

  By the time Atticus parked in front of the address, the thought of a down and dirty fight appealed to him. If he’d been a centaur making love to Bryn, now he felt like The Cretan Bull presented to Minos by Poseidon, a normally mild being until anger unleashed its destructive powers.

  Atticus left the car and was immediately surrounded by the sea of his brothers. They’d dressed alike for the occasion, black leather jackets over white t-shirts. It was shades of West Side Story though he imagined it could have been much worse. Grease came to mind.

  Sammael correctly read his thoughts. “Sorry. We didn’t have time to work up a song and dance routine for the occasion. Your ghost hunting with the new wife has kept us hopping, creatively speaking.”

  “The mummy was a bit much,” Atticus said, unable to work up any true aggravation.

  It’d be pointless anyway. His brothers seemed determined to show him they could see to the business of Death better than he could.

  That’s the highest compliment they can give you, you know.

  Bryn’s earlier words whispered through his mind, derailing his usual internal dialog about his brothers. Could she be right? he wondered, looking at the faces around him.

  There was laughter lurking in their eyes, a shared response to his predictable comment about their manifestation of Seker no doubt, and yet they were all here, watching him, waiting for him to act, perhaps thinking about their own futures and what might be necessary when it came to claiming a bride.

  A sense of pride filled him. He hadn’t done too badly with them.

  “Time to get on with it,” he said, standing a little straighter as he turned his attention to the matter of Bryn’s suitor.

  “Bad news,” Sammael said. “He’s not home. There’s no one in the house.” His smile held wicked amusement. “Except for the mother.”

  “The mother you say?”

  Sammael nodded. “Built like a linebacker. Put a Raiders uniform on her and she’d be a great fantasy football pick.”

  Well, wasn’t the mother the root of this problem anyway? Atticus thought. No mother, no reason for Bryn’s suitor not to look elsewhere for a wife. It might be a harsh solution considering the apparent dependency, and perhaps if Mark hadn’t spied on he and Bryn while they were making love then left the note for her on the windshield, Atticus might have been content to simply discuss the matter with Mark’s mother and have her rein in her son, but given everything that had happened…

  “I believe it’s time to have a chat with her,” Atticus said, “and convince her to be on her way.”

  Trapped in human form it’d be a tad more difficult. Generally his mere p
resence as Death was enough for a lingering soul to open a ghostway with the desire to get away from him. And if that didn’t work, a touch of the scythe would do the trick.

  Still, Atticus felt up to the task. He headed toward the house, his brothers with him.

  The front door presented the first challenge. Atticus frowned when he found it locked. He wasn’t accustomed to finding obstacles in his path when it came to entering a home. He wasn’t a vampire, after all, he didn’t need an invitation to cross the threshold.

  Perseverance. Persistence. Rising to the challenge and refusing to accept defeat. They were important lessons to reinforce for his brothers.

  He searched for a hidden key beneath flowerpots and underneath rocks. When he didn’t find one he left the front porch and walked around the house. The back and garage doors were locked as well, as were the first floor windows.

  Curtains fluttered against an upstairs window, the sound beckoning like a signal. Atticus sighed. An extension ladder left conveniently against the side of the house would have been a welcome sight, the tree close enough to offer a way in was not.

  Perseverance. Persistence. Rising to the challenge and refusing to accept defeat, he intoned, pulling himself up onto the first branch and trying to remember the last time he’d climbed a tree.

  Midway up, he frowned, unable to remember ever climbing a tree. He had, hadn’t he? He must have.

  And yet he couldn’t recall such a moment of spontaneous fun during his childhood. But then, from the time he could remember, he’d been with their father.

  Hah! His brothers complained that he was old-fashioned, lacking in imagination… Well they hadn’t experienced their father in his working years. They hadn’t witnessed the terrifying visages he’d manifested. The goddess Kali with her necklace of fifty-one heads had nothing on their father in his glory days.

  Annihilation. Ruthless destruction. Their father had been a force of nature rather than a shepherd of souls.

  Atticus shuddered and pushed the memories away. He edged his way higher into the tree, then sideways along a branch.