The Forbidden Fruit

by S. K Munt

  ‘God… Larkin… no! I’m so sorry!’ he gripped my elbows and pulled me closer. ‘That’s what I thought at first! But you were so cold and seemingly unaffected by it that I thought… I thought maybe you could separate the two and be okay.’

  I had been cold; ice cold, and I had not yet defrosted. ‘I was in shock,’ I whispered. ‘I honestly thought I was going to die…’

  But then Kohl came along with his jar of fireflies, and kept me alive… and has kept me alive since!

  ‘You didn’t even cry when I saw you the next day! You made jokes! You…’ He shook me, shaking my tears free. ‘And now you say that you’ve been breaking up since, but hiding that so I would not have a chance to see the damage and fix it?’

  ‘It can’t be fixed!’ I wailed, trying to fight him off as he tried to crush me against him.

  ‘Yes it can! Now that I know what you were willing to sacrifice, I can send them away, and we can have a fresh start! And once I’ve proven how faithful I will be to you-’

  ‘You don’t get a fresh start!’ I said, shoving him off again. ‘Don’t you get it? We were an US already to me! I cannot go to another man, so my loyalty was never going to be compromised! It was YOU who had to prove that you had what it took to be my true love, and you failed!’

  ‘You told me it was inevitable!’ he looked winded. ‘That you wouldn’t be able to do it for me so they could… you pressed my hand into Emmerly’s! You gave me your blessing!’

  ‘No, YOU told me that it was inevitable by making that an ultimatum in the first place! And I stupidly hoped that you were wrong! That you’d feel her hand in hers and feel nothing! Well, more fool me huh? Message learned- if a Barachiel tells you that he loves you, but is going to have to fuck someone else then believe it, because Barachiels mean every word they say and do not compromise for anybody! Even the girl they love! Which I’m sorry Kohén- but that means that it isn’t love you felt but fixation, just like Miguel and Satan! What we have feels real, but it will not stand the test of time!’

  ‘That’s not fair!’

  ‘I thought everything was fair?’ I demanded hotly. ‘I thought this world was perfect, right?’ I slapped my head. ‘Oh wait- when things go wrong for you, Karol and your father, it isn’t fair! But for Kohl and I it’s: ‘Well you’re third-born so fucking DEAL with things being unfair!’

  ‘Stop throwing the fact that you are third-born in my face!’ he cried. ‘I do not throw it in yours!’

  ‘You do not anymore, but society will until I prove that I am more than that!’

  ‘Well, here’s your chance- take that chance on me! Say you’ll marry the prince! This is your Cinderella fantasy Larkin, and I am trying to make it a reality- but you keep throwing the glass slipper at my head and making me wonder if I am crazy to offer it to you!’

  ‘You are crazy! And I grew out of fairy tales a long time ago, your highness, because I realised that there is no such thing as a happily ever after for a woman in this world, not even for your mother- who has lived every facet of a fairy-tale and yet still cries herself to sleep in her bedroom alone!’

  ‘I’m saying that I want to marry you, not join with you! You’ll never live my mother’s life!’

  ‘I already have!’ I cried. ‘In Cinderella, the prince turned his back to the ugly step-sisters, Kohén- he didn’t fuck them and hand out rare shoes as a consolation prize!’ His face twisted in grief. ‘And if your twin Kohl HAS to rise above his needs by law, you could sure as hell manage it for love if you tried, but made it one week without going for the pussy that was yours and nearby for the taking because YOU DID NOT LOVE ME ENOUGH TO TRY!’

  Kohén’s face constricted. ‘Yes I DO! I went to her so I wouldn’t pound down your door!’

  ‘That’s not love!’

  ‘YES IT IS! And I am GOING to marry you!’

  ‘No!’ I cried, and he drew back like I’d stung him. ‘No, no NO you WON’T! I won’t say yes! I will run! And if you do not take me at my word right now or banish me for denying you, then I will run TONIGHT! I will swim until I drown!’

  ‘How can you say that?’ he asked, aghast. ‘Just the other night we were-’

  ‘I will not survive your dreams and promises if I stay!’ I cried, thinking of Karol as I ripped at my sarong, then kicked it free. ‘You have such grand dreams for us but you have built them on a foundation of nothing but your sexual frustration and optimism! And if you will not take even two seconds to consider the fact that is your frustrated cock making these promises without a lick of sense then- here!’ I tugged at my bikini strings, exposing my breasts. ‘Have some clarity of mind!’

  ‘Now who’s being fucking crazy?’ he demanded, walking closer and snatching my top off of the ground, shoving it at me. ‘Put this back on now or I’ll-’

  ‘Or you’ll what?’ I help up my hands, saw his eyes go straight to my breasts and sneered at him on the inside. ‘Finish the threat Kohén! Do you think it’s a new threat to me? Do you think I don’t live under the shadow of your truest promise every day: ‘Do as I say- or I’ll do as I please!’? Well, go on and do it already! Because my future is in your hands regardless, right? I will never know freedom; only a different kind of contract- whore, spouse or wife- and I’ll be treated the same way as all three! But if I fuck you now, you’ll have four years to get it out of your system-’

  ‘I will never get you out of my system!’ he protested.

  ‘Yes you will, and you are holding my dreams hostage until it is done. So take me now, see that sex is just sex and my anatomy is incapable of doing anything for you that theirs cannot, and dismiss me after and make that your NEW vow to me! You’ll get what you want, they’ll get you, and I’ll earn my keep as a whore! The prince has never thrown out a woman he’s defiled while she’s still so young, has he? Which means I’ll be so tight and youthful in comparison to the other working Companions, that I’ll make more than enough to fund at least one plot of land in a year if I really go hard at it, won’t I?’

  He took my face in his hands. ‘Stop it! Stop it right now!’

  ‘Stop what?’ I demanded, tears running down my face. ‘Tempting you? But this is what your nature NEEDS more than anything right? So take it!’

  ‘No! I mean to stop your empty threats and your ugly words! They are not going to break the hold you have on me! All you are doing is making me suffer more!’

  ‘Actually, I’m trying to stop you from suffering on my behalf for another second longer.’ I leaned in and kissed him and whispered: ‘Take me Kohén…’ I nibbled on his lip gently and tasted both of our tears. ‘Complete my training, fill me with your seed and then turn me out of your life.’

  ‘You are bluffing!’ he whimpered, but he caught my elbows and held them tightly as his lips pressed back. ‘You are worth too much to yourself to do this…’ he groaned then shoved me back. ‘You are just trying to trick me into proving that I don’t love you, which is horse shit, Larkin!’

  ‘I don’t bluff,’ I whispered, ‘you’ve played poker with me enough times to know that.’ I pulled at one string at my hip and his eyes flickered to it, then the other, and when the fabric slid down the gap between my thighs, his eyes stopped moving at all and glazed over. ‘And I have not been worth one cent to myself, since I saw you trade your love for me, for her body.’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s not what I did.’

  ‘Yes it is. You gave me Liberty, and then took Emmerly’s as payment, and now you hold my heart in debt for that too and I will never be able to love myself again for cutting her off at the knees, much less you.’ I took his hands and pressed them to my breasts, and he fell to his knees in front of me, staring up at my body with an entranced expression- not my eyes. ‘But I do want you, and you need me. So take what I am offering- because it is all that you will ever get from me, your highness; I will not promise you my future and cannot go on in this way a day longer!’

  A single tear escaped the corner of his eye, and when he lifted his g
aze to mine, it slid down his perfect jaw and onto my knee. ‘You hate me so much that you cannot bear to even conceive of a future with me anymore?’

  ‘I am grateful to you enough to give you what you have earned from me, so that you will not take it against my will,’ I corrected him, kneeling before him and leaning in to kiss his jaw. ‘Your feelings for me are too strong to deny. Every day since we have arrived here, you have grown weaker in spirit, but harder beneath the belt…’ I nibbled on his ear, and moved his hand to start opening the buttons of his shirt while he kneaded my breasts and nudged his face closer and closer to them. I moaned. ‘You’re not sleeping, are you my darling?’ Kohén groaned and shook his head a little. I dropped my face lower and suckled on his collarbone, spreading his shirt open further. ‘You’ve thought about forcing yourself on me, haven’t you? The other night, if I’d said no…? It occurred to you, didn’t it?’ I pushed his shirt open and ran my hands down his chest, feeling his gentle, perfect muscles. ‘You want to know what I feel like, don’t you? It’s never far from your mind, is it?’

  He whimpered and took my nipple in his mouth. ‘Your touch is scalding hot! You are burning me Larkin!’

  ‘Burn with me then,’ I cupped his crotch and caressed him with a trembling hand and he shuddered and shoved me back.

  ‘I am starting to hate you…’ he growled, thickening in my palm. ‘But I am also starting to think that you want this more than I do!’ he came down over me and pushed open my knees, staring into me with greedy, dilated eyes. ‘And you know how much I like to give you what you want!’

  ‘Mmm…’ I writhed as he slipped his finger inside me, gritting my teeth when it hurt. My body was nowhere near relaxed enough to welcome the intrusion but I turned my face away so he wouldn’t see my grimace. ‘Yes! Yes I do want you!’

  It will hurt yes, but you can take it, and it will be over soon enough. Breathe- it’s just sex, he’ll never truly get inside you and Karol will never get your virginity!

  ‘This?’ he demanded, and I looked up in time to see him unbuckle his belt clasp. ‘This is what you want?’

  ‘Yes!’ I cried, sitting up to help him get his pants off faster. ‘So much! I can’t even bear it, Kohén!’

  ‘Then how can I deny you?’ Kohén leaned into me and tried to press his lips to mine, but I was about to sob with fear, so I lay back down.

  ‘You can’t,’ I croaked, hitching my knees and letting my thighs open again. I touched myself, and felt nothing- absolutely nothing- until he came down on me again and tried to turn my face up for another kiss and then panic flooded me.

  ‘Now!’ I practically turned my face all the way around to get it away from his mouth. I wrapped my legs around his waist and reached between us, trying to get to his open jeans so that I could coax his erection out. ‘Impale me now!’

  ‘Wait!’ Kohén’s hand yanked my face back, and the moment our eyes locked his face lost all colour, and he fell back. ‘Oh my god! I can’t even… this is like the night we first kissed, isn’t it? And your sixteenth!’ he immediately began to rise. ‘You don’t want this, not at all! You’re acting, only instead of going limp this time or making fun of me- you’re pretending to be aroused!!’

  ‘No!’ I sat up and reached for him. ‘You know I want you! You’ve felt my body respond-’

  ‘Because you love me! You got wet for me the other night because you love me and we were having fun!’ he slapped my hand away from his leg- hard. ‘But you don’t believe that you deserve things like fun or love, so you’re trying to cheat us out of a future with sex!’

  ‘We don’t deserve a future together!’ I cried.

  ‘Then we will earn one! We will atone!’

  ‘I am third-born and can never be anything but a sacrifice to you!’ I screamed, my anger with myself and Karol rising to the surface and making me panic. ‘You cannot support the kingdom’s right to reap girls to be your playthings on the basis that they should not exist otherwise- and then tell me that I deserve more! And that is what you did when you went to her, and that is what I cannot forgive, because it damned us both!’

  ‘I can’t be held responsible for our kingdom’s laws!’

  ‘But I do hold you responsible! Every time you go them, you are saying that it’s okay!’

  ‘It’s okay with them!’ he said. ‘They welcome me!’

  ‘They are lying to themselves, not you! But it’s not okay! Either we all deserve more- or I deserve to be treated the same as the others!’ I grabbed his hands and tried to pull him back down to me. ‘I am not special! I am not better than they are and I will not be able to hold onto your heart for long, for I am nothing! And you are no better than your father or Karol, so do what all three of you want to see done-’

  Kohén wrenched his hands from mine and turned away. ‘You’re wrong,’ he growled. ‘About everything! Put your clothes on NOW!’

  ‘Or WHAT?’ I demanded yet again, getting to my feet and stamping my foot. ‘Or what, or WHAT?’

  ‘Stop it!’ he pressed his hands to his ears. ‘Stop it Lark!’ a sob shook free of him. ‘Stop trying to make me a monster!’

  ‘Or WHAT?!’

  ‘Or I will banish you so that you HAVE nothing!’ Kohén roared as he turned around, and when his arms swung out, a ripple of blue energy escaped from every one of his fingers and burned the air. I screamed and ducked and then scented the acrid smell of burning hair. I heard him gasp as I turned and saw the severed lock of blonde hair on the floor beside me, and then looked up to see the perfect scorch mark ringing the walls. I jerked my head back to look at his face, and screeched when I saw that his eyes were bright white and terrifying.

  ‘Lark-’ he staggered toward me but I turned into the wall and sobbed.

  ‘Just do it!’ I mewled. ‘Take me, kill me, banish me… punish me; I am at your mercy as the law decrees I should be! Worthless! Third! You will be the end of me either way, and I cannot live another second in that palace knowing that with every day that I draw closer to being released, you are weakening and contemplating claiming what is yours!’

  ‘I am not weakening!’ he cried. ‘I am growing stronger and taller- like you said to my father! Like you said to Atticus! With your love, I will be the equal of Miguel-’

  ‘I lied! I lied to save my own ass! To stop him from pushing you to seduce me!’ I hid behind my hands. ‘Miguel would never have lain with one of the other survivors if Gabriella had denied him, but you did! I am not your Gabriella- I am your Satan! And God, if he could see us, would surely despise us both for how our love has ruined the others! So take me, release me, and let me make money however I can, and I will give all of the profits I make to the three-child families in Janiel so Jasper Bronx never makes a rule like this one!’

  Kohén pulled back, looking sick. ‘You are a stupid, stupid girl if you believe that giving you cause to hate me more now will make any of this right in God’s eyes, when all he wants is for us to love,’ Kohén growled. ‘And a fool if you think that having you now will cure me of what I feel for you- and an idiot if you think that taking you now won’t lead to you receiving a golden glyph tomorrow!’ He wiped tears from his face and my abdomen clenched in fear. I’d kill him, if he tried that! ‘I have done nothing but love you, and I have never forced you to say no to me, but have backed off, and just now, I have risen above a need you cannot even conceive of, to leave you as a lady, not a conquest. But… it’s still not enough for you, is it? You’ve become too jaded to let me inside you in any way, haven’t you?’

  ‘Satan wanted to take God’s hand in the end,’ I swallowed. ‘But she could not, because she’d forgotten how to love or trust.’ I lifted my wet eyes to his. ‘That is what has happened here.’

  ‘You’re not Satan,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not God,’ I whispered, and he bristled, his eyes darkening again as his frustration rebuilt itself within his soul. ‘So how on earth is a potential whore who has never known pure love from anyone- even from her mother
- and a half-bred angel with lustful cravings, supposed to hold on to love, trust and one another, if the two most powerful entities of all time failed to do so for the good of mankind?’

  ‘Do you hate God?’ he whispered.

  ‘I do not love him right now and my dreams will never come to pass so long as you obsess over me,’ I said, wrapping the sarong around myself. ‘So you might as well take me- because in the end, I am screwed anyway.’

  ‘I cannot do that,’ he said. ‘I am obligated to win love for God by making my people happy, and you are one of them.’

  I laughed, getting to my feet, thinking of a passage I’d read in the bible the night before. ‘If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.’

  Kohén glared at me as he re-buttoned his shirt. ‘What is that?’

  ‘My life as a whore; it is true now as it was in the time before, and you are kidding yourself if you believe that you will not do something in the next four years if you abstain now, short of covering your eyes every time our paths cross, to send me flying into Satan’s eternal embrace.’

  ‘Then I will turn my back to you,’ Kohén croaked getting to his feet, ‘as you have turned your heart. I will find a way to feel complete without you, keep my promise and prove just how wrong you are- and win your heart for God in the long run, even if it is lost to everyone now.’ He threw my swimsuit at me as he walked past. ‘And to ease your mind and your suffering- rest assured that I will never, EVER look at you with lust or love or friendship in my eyes so long as you remain within that harem AGAIN, for you deserve none of them- just to be free and alone, you hateful girl!’