XXVIII

“Bullshit! Bullshit!”

Lilith pointed an accusatory finger at Kale, a look of shock on her face as if she had just witnessed a murder. She said, “I have all four queens. Pick ‘em up, pick ‘em all up.”

Kale let out a silent curse, an angered tint to his skin as he leaned forward to gather the stack of downward facing playing cards into his free hand. Lilith gave herself her own congratulation. The impromptu card game at the center of the sitting room had been a nice escape to normality, even at two o’clock in the morning. The Rothchild house was an unusually an active place at what Alma called odd hours, but demons – unlike humans – did not require such physiological norms like that of sleeping. Small facts such as these pieced together the world Alma had been thrust into for the past two months.

Two months . . . the lapse of time astounded her. Those two months felt like two very long, very gruelling and very draining centuries.

“I don’t like to lose,” Kale said, organizing the large amount of cards into his hands, frowning while trying to make sense of the mess before him. “You’ll get yours soon enough.”

Lilith and Alma, sharing smiles, waited as he got organized.

“A little late for you, isn’t it, kid?” Cillian directed at Alma, as was most of his rudeness. From the staircase, his footsteps arrived onto the wood floor of the foyer and he approached the three in a wrinkled shirt and jeans as if he had fallen asleep in them. Their days lasted far long than twenty-four hours, so laundry day must have been an adjustment.

Alma gave him a pithy smile.

“Cillian, come on,” Lilith sighed. “Now did you come down here to pick a fight or do you have something to say?”

Rounding the small group on the floor, he leaned in and whispered something to Lilith, which Alma purposefully ignored: she didn’t care what he had to say, even if it was conspicuous. Moments later, Lilith stood and announced a hasty departure, already on her way toward the stairs with Cillian.

“It’s because you know I’m going to win! You know you lose by disqualification,” Kale argued, seeming eager that his greatest opponent was ditching the game. He was a very competitive person and he played to win.

Lilith just flailed a dismissive hand over her shoulder.

He snarled a lip after the couple. “They’re going to have sex.”

“You think?”

Alma looked back to the staircase, immediately recognizing the kindling desire between two people as they shared a hushed conversation. The way he looked at her was the clearest indicator of all. She remembered how such a gaze could rouse the embers of passion until it was a blazing fire, burning through all other thoughts and feelings until a crippling ecstasy took over. Yes, she remembered that look as if she had seen it in her dreams every night; it had been such a long time since she shared one with Illias.

It had been three days since the heated incident in the kitchen, since Illias had shared his secret, his truth. And although those few moments of unadulterated, otherworldly connection had been something far beyond groundbreaking, it did not bring them any closer together. But Alma knew healing took time; after all, it was Illias who told her grief was not a negotiation, not a chance to hurt later for a present moment of peace. She remembered the days after her mother died: She had to remind herself that Illias had centuries to dwell over the events of his life and it was something Alma could never understand, no matter how much she tried to relate her circumstances to his, because really, she couldn’t.

And so, she gave him space and he kept to himself, quiet and reserved.

It was just strange: All this time Alma had been looking to Illias for help, but it seemed that he was the one that needed her help.

“Are we playing?”

Alma blinked to clear her thoughts and nodded. The sight of him so enthralled by a simple card game gave him a boyish appeal that reminded her of times when simplicities, like trails of ants or blowing bubbles, had so entranced her at a young age.

“Do you know how to play Gin?”

Kale smirked. “I know how to win Gin.”

Alma scoffed as she gathered the cards from his hand, shuffling them together between her fingers; she’d show him. After quickly dispersing the cards between them, Kale reached over and pulled a loose strand of hair from her shoulder, one that tickled her skin like that of a spider, briefly startling her.

“Thanks. I’m shedding everywhere. I should have been born a snake.”

“And would you trick others into eating forbidden fruit?”

“Watch out with those religious undertones.”

“Are you religious, Alma?”

She stared at him pensively, debating his intentions and eventually succumbing to a shrug. “Religious . . .” she repeated, shaking her head, “what does that even mean? Isn’t that just another word for belief or faith? I mean, I believe in things and I have faith in things, but does that necessarily have to be for something that is greater than me? Religious is subjective, anyway, and it doesn’t really matter what I believe.”

“Coming from someone who claims such disregard, you seem to have thought a lot about it.”

“Well, you’d be surprised how often religion comes up in the practice of psychology,” Alma said, urging Kale to start the game.

“But, you know there is a god; you know there is something after moral life. And you deny there is something greater than yourself?”

“No,” she said, readying herself for the conversation, “but I do tend to base my facts on empirical evidence. I think a lot of people do.”

“Just because you don’t see it, does not mean it isn’t there.”

“And just because it’s there doesn’t mean I have to believe in it.”

“And yet, psychology is based on the belief – the conviction – in illnesses that you physically cannot see. It’s about having faith in a treatment, in a counsel, that may or may not help your patient. Is it not about your belief in something that, to everyone else – including your patient, may not even exist?”

Kale looked smug at his argument, one that – shamefully – silenced Alma.

“Someone told you your mother was dead: how did you know what was real and what you wanted to be real? How is it that you can hear and feel something real but not see it? And does that make it untrue? Was her death real before or after you knew it had occurred?”

She stared at him, wary of the subject matter he was using to make a point. She buried herself in her cards.

“It’s like that riddle: If a tree falls down in the middle of a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound? No, it doesn’t, because we, as humans, exist by our own definition of what is real, which more often than not is something that we can only discern with our five sense. Technically, the falling tree would make a sound, but because you or I were not there to witness it, that tree and that sound would not exist, get it? You were born – we were all born – into a world that was here before we were here, however, this world would not exist unless we, ourselves, exist first. And yet, if we did not see, hear, touch, taste, feel, or know anything, we would still exist to everything and everyone else, right?”

Alma barely caught up with him before saying, “Then it isn’t just religion that is subjective – so is the existence of everything around us.”

“Unless,” Kale paused, “you have faith. Then everything and anything exists beyond logical proof or material evidence, which is actually quite objective.”

She sighed at him.

“Can’t we ever just have a normal conversation about music or something?”

“Normal: what does that even mean? Isn’t that just another word for social stereotypes and prejudices against-”

“Shut up,” Alma interrupted. She stared at him as he took his turn, at that impassioned look in his grey eyes. “What is it that you have faith in then, huh?”

“I want to hear your answer first.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever known. It’s just so much easier to believe in something that you can see and feel because then it doesn’t mean you’re crazy. And I can’t be crazy because I study people struggling with that very same conflict between what is real and what isn’t.”

“Then don’t you think you’re in the wrong business if you constantly have to prove your sanity?”

It was obvious Kale was intelligent, analytical and philosophical; that he used logic and reasoning to understand and piece together all aspects of life – including that of religion, faith and belief: subjects prided on being idiosyncratic. Alma remembered when she was like him, approaching topics objectively with an opened mind, and then her mother died.

Perhaps she was using psychology to answer the sudden plethora of questions that went unanswered after that death, questions that – as Kale explained – were only unanswerable because she did not recognize the truth in fear of separating what was real from what she wanted to be real. She had relied on psychology for so long that its crutch had turned into a prosthetic leg, one which she was now experiencing phantom limb syndrome in its failure to provide what Alma so desired from it: retribution.

It was a sad moment when she realized that she relied on a blind faith in psychology’s abilities to cure her broken heart.

She gave the ceiling a quick glance: Okay, you got me.

“I have faith in my capabilities of doing all that I want to do and succeeding in them because isn’t true hell your life gone wrong?”

Flashing Alma his handful of cards, Kale added, “Gin: I win.”

Alma had decided, even before starting the card game with Kale and Lilith, that she wanted to see Illias, that she needed to see him. Witnessing what had so intimately transpired between Cillian and Lilith, she yearned for something, even a little something, that would let her feel just an eighth of what Cillian and Lilith felt for each other.

Illias’ bedroom was placed in the corner of the house and she trailed the length of the hallway toward his closed door. Leaning in, she rapped on the wood with a swift flick of her knuckles and waited for movement, for sound. She didn’t know why she was being quiet: he never slept, at least, not while she was awake. Tightening her hand around the doorknob, she cracked the door open to see the lights on. The room was empty and she pushed the door open to step inside, a plummeting disappointment anchoring beneath her ribs before she noticed Illias standing in the doorframe leading out onto the balcony.

The sight of him enthralling her, she gave a grand smile. Illias returned a knowing grin, nodding his head back toward the darkened porch for her to join him, and she closed the bedroom door behind her. He was smoking again, and when he took a deep drag, the amber end of the cigarette ignited his face and cast handsome shadows over his features, enflaming the golden striations of his irises when he pushed the hair from his eyes.

Alma watched with great fascination and asked, “Do those do anything for you?”

He flicked the excess ash over the balustrade. “They do everything but kill me: The best bad habit I will ever have.”

“You know, I smoked when I was seventeen,” she said, eliciting raised brows from Illias. “Yes, I did, right after my mom died and I thought I was invincible.”

“Everyone feels invincible at seventeen.”

“Did you?”

“No. I knew my boundaries quite well.”

“Of course you did,” Alma rolled her eyes.

When she looked back to him, he was smiling at her. How nice it was to see his face harbouring something other than pain and restraint for once. With him looking at her like that, with an uninhibited gaze like he could see through her clothes, her skin, and her bones, he eventually reached her heart, which was now palpitating with excitement and timidity. Remembering those stolen glances she had taken at him many times before seemed childish and trivial to the way he now looked at her.

“So . . .” she said, shifting onto her hip.

“You don’t have to stay out here.”

“No,” she almost yelled at him and added, “I want to stay here. I . . . want to be with you.”

Her eyes were quick to meet his face for any indication that he felt the same way. He looked at her like she was the first human he had ever seen, as if realizing her sacrifice of whatever she had done in order to stand there beside him and only him. Those eyes of his bore deeply inside her, piecing together the hidden parts of her and succeeding with ease. A silence plagued the air, much like the cigarette smoke that lingered far too long between them until Illias tossed the stub over the edge of the balcony. Acid ate at the very next words either tried to say unless they were the ones Illias and Alma wanted to hear.

So they ended up saying nothing at all.

With their lips.

She hadn’t meant she wanted him, but Alma was relieved they were headed in that direction; for a long while there, she thought he had lost all interest in her. The kiss they had shared days ago in front of the house had reminded her body of the wonders he could bestow upon it and flustering thoughts had consumed her since. And although she chastised herself for thinking about Illias in the worst of ways when he was feeling such intense emotions of anger and guilt, that inherent maternal instinct to care for him and tend to him had quickly morphed into yearning for something more, something much more.

He tasted of smoke and his stubble scratched against her skin, but Alma couldn’t have cared less: Illias was touching her, he was kissing her, and nothing mattered but him. She wound her arms over his shoulders, feeling the heat from his skin emanate through his clothes and into her. The two danced a few steps until she was pressed back into a column, their bodies crashing against one another as hands disappeared beneath clothing, into hair, and lips dissolved into each other. She could have been submerged in the North Atlantic, but his raking fingers along her back felt like a thousand raging fires all over her body.

Then, what had been needed became something wanted; their grips softened and their lips opened as if allowing the other person to breathe their very being inside of them, to become one.

Pulling away, Alma asked, “Do you-”

“Yes, I do,” he said, enclosing his lips over hers again.

Thank god, was all that was going through her mind.

Their clumsy and hastened steps into the bedroom made them both laugh. After Illias laid her down atop the covers, he straightened up and peeled his shirt over his head before discarding it somewhere Alma wasn’t even aware existed. Her insides churned when he combed his hair back out of his face and smirked at her. When she blushed, he slouched down to kiss at her face and a hand slipped between them to unbutton her jeans. Removing them with a harsh tug, Illias then pushed her up toward the pillows and climbed onto the bed.

Alma’s eyes steadily followed his hands trail the length of her legs and reach the hem of her shirt, slowly gathering the fabric beneath her breasts like a theatre curtain. His fingertips outlined the protruding bones of her stomach as his consuming eyes enticed the sight of her pale skin spotted by the occasional freckle or mole. The blaring bedside lamp ignited her fear of rejection and she met Illias’ eyes with a tentative reproach.

“I have the worst tan lines,” she blurted out before he said anything about them.

“Your tan lines are the last thing on my mind, I assure you,” he told her, and just like that with those few simple words, her flaws and fears were someone else’s. “I want to see you, Alma, I want to see everything.”

He placed his full weight atop her to push his hands beneath her and unclasp her bra. Undone, Alma herself pulled it off her arms and pressed him back down on top of her, feeling the tiny hairs of his abdomen tickle at the skin of her stomach. A hiss escaped from his lips when their skin moulded together, her perk nipples sensitizing both their bodies. His lips pressed a sweet kiss against her mouth before they began to trail down her body; he paid special attention to the dip of her throat and the bony curve of her shoulder, his lips spiking the nerves that were rarely tried, enrapturing Alma in a new sense of touch. But that was Illias’ way; he always seemed to know where to touch her, as if she were a constellation and his lips and fingers would begin at one point and trail on to the next, completing her, completing every inch of her. As his hands and mouth moved through the valley of her breasts toward the concave of her stomach, Alma practiced her coos and sighs, ones that reverberated against his lips. He dipped his head down and nuzzled the spot just below her belly button, instantaneously causing a shooting shiver straight down the middle of her stomach and ending in the heated juncture between her legs.

Illias’ breath pounded against her skin as he groaned, “I love smelling you get wet.”

He hooked his fingers under the belt of her underwear and pulled the fabric out form under her bottom and off her hips, catching them briefly around her thighs before flinging them off her feet. She began to squirm as anticipation bubbled fiercely within her and the heat raging between her thighs made her skin flush. Her heart jumped into her throat when his face lowered itself to meet her own. He settled heavily between her legs and pulled her body down along the bed to meet his hips. And when their eyes met, she could see him reeling back into hundreds of different memories as hesitation caught him by surprise.

“I’m sorry for the pain I caused you.”

Alma furrowed her brow.

“For every single time I hurt you.”

Having this conversation with him between her naked legs was somewhat odd, but she continued, “When you show me this, this part that you yourself choose to let me see, pain doesn’t exist to me. And I know it doesn’t exist to you, either. They call this progress in my field, you know.”

“Don’t lump me in with the people you study.”

Alma smiled to herself. “But I do study you. I’ve studied you from the first moment I saw you.”

Illias’ eyes gathered her face into a single image in a few moments of silence before he whispered, “And now it’s my turn to study you.” He blindly grabbed one of her hands as he kissed her and threw it over his neck, urging the other to do the same. He gathered her up into his arms, skin flush against skin, and a hand was between their bodies and he was finally inside her.

Alma loved the weight of his body on top of hers, how his every sigh and groan was felt through the very pores of her skin. He pulled his hips backs, teasing her with his girth, and then drove himself deep into her body so that she felt the caress spike through to her fingers and toes. He rode her slow and easy, as if he wanted that moment to last, as if being there inside of her was good enough. She saw how he savoured her in the way he touched and the way he looked at her when he rocked himself against her hips. Having him, a man like him, poised firmly over her, made Alma stare at him, made her wonder so many things about the demon who was now inside her.

“Hi,” she whispered, suddenly feeling awkward to see him so close while they were so intimately joined; the heat in her cheeks was no longer due to the sex.

“Hi, baby,” he smiled.

Giving a small grunt as he thrust into her, he leaned down and kissed her good and hard, immediately quelling her embarrassment. Her palms pressed into his back felt the muscles move beneath them as he stroked her from within, over and over again. He grunted into her mouth when she lifted her hips and met his stroke, whispering a couple affectionate names against her lips when she tightened around him.

Coursing her fingers through his hair, Alma kissed any part of him that her lips could reach and he closed his eyes to luxuriate her affections, reciprocating the love when her lips finally met his again. He pulled away from her mouth that cried out against his and nudged her head to the side with his nose to kiss at her neck. She pushed her head back into the mattress and refrained from crying out as he attacked her sweet spot for all its worth.

Propping himself up onto his hands, Illias watched Alma react to his touch, his hair masking his intent gaze, but the heat with which she could feel him starving drove her mad. He began to pump her mercilessly, grunting like an animal in turgid heat, until Alma was breathing from the frantic pace. Caging her between his muscled arms made her feel as tiny and weak as a mouse.

“Illias . . . oh g-god . . . !” she finished with a moan, slapping a hand against his chest where she felt it rumble under a gravely laugh. In response, he rotated his hips and gave her one luscious caress deep inside of her.

“Ready to come, beautiful?”

Then, his movements slowed, and instead of speed, he stroked her in deep, penetrating thrusts with his unrelenting girth as her body reverberated against his hips. Illias let out a curse when she squeezed around him in a vice-like grip; she couldn’t help it when he pushed that deep, she couldn’t control how her body reacted. His agonizingly slow lovemaking caused her to moan into the air that was far too shallow for the boom of her voice. Hearing herself resound in her ears instilled the fact that Illias knew exactly what he was doing to her, and she couldn’t control an ounce of it. With a rough thrust, Alma scrutinized her face and let out a soft gasp, her hands twitching in their refrain to press themselves against his abdomen to keep him from pumping her too deeply, but her eyes remained locked with his. Amused at her restraint, he gave her another hard thrust causing her to scold his name.

“I love that little face you make; sorry, baby,” he said, not sounding apologetic at all.

He leaned down and gave her a another kiss, her breath pounding against her lips, and her body curled tightly beneath his as Illias kept her exactly as he wanted her: prisoner to his body. She made her little mews, reaching her practiced sopranos, and her hands trailed his front where the muscles of his stomach flexed beneath her fingers and he groaned in response.

As his thrusts escalated, Alma became paralyzed by ineffable pleasure. Pushing hair out of her damp face, she let out a breathy plea, her body tingling with the precursor that was her orgasm. She was made so weak by him that she could only take what he did to her.

It was unfair that a woman’s body could be so giving and be so unforgiving at the same time.

Breathless, Illias said, “I should have been your first . . . instead of some stupid, clumsy boy.”

“Oh god . . . oh my . . .I-Illias, I . . . I . . .!” she stammered as the ecstasy built and built until she couldn’t stand it anymore, until finally, she exploded with the power of a thousand suns reeling brightly behind her closed eyes and his name was torn from her lips as she came for what felt like the very first time. The girl barely got the chance to explore the pleasure he gave to her as tidal wave after tidal wave shook her foundation making her quiver with such power that she blacked out for a few moments of pure, extraordinary bliss.

And then a new sensation overcame her, that of Illias inside of her. With a grunt, he pushed himself into the deepest part of her and she took him to a special place only he was allowed to visit. She could feel the hot release against her inner walls, making her orgasm all the more sweet.

After a few moments of stillness, when the cold air attacked her warmed skin, Alma let out a great sigh, one Illias reciprocated. He hovered above her as the blood came back to his head, and when she reached up to push the hair out of his face, he kissed her wrist as she pulled away. She urged him to lie atop her and smiled into his hair when he wrapped his arms beneath her body. As she caressed his hair behind his ear while he nuzzled into her neck, cradling his body with her own, she allowed him to feel the beat of her heart as it languidly returned to normal.

“I’ve missed sleeping beside you each night,” he admitted.

Alma initially had trouble focusing on Illias’ face in such close proximity to hers. “Really?” The words came to her like the greatest epiphany in the world. He just smiled and kissed her causing her to sigh into his mouth; she would have fluttered her eyes closed had they been opened.

“I’ve missed it, too.”

And just as he got the chance to kiss her again, she pulled back and gathered his attention. Placing a soft hand on the side of his face, she said, “I know that you’ve been preoccupied, but if you could find time to shave, that would be great. I mean, stubble is sexy, especially on you, but not very practical in these situations.”

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll be sure to keep up with shaving from now on.”

Which, of course, meant they would be getting close tomorrow, and the day after, and then the day after that.

Producing a great grin, Alma inwardly screamed a triumphant cry.

Many times Alma toyed with the idea of being in love.

In high school, she attributed her crushes and boyfriends to liking the idea of being in love, but never being in love. She liked the idea of waking up just to see someone, of having someone worship the little quirks and faces that no one else noticed, that no one else wanted to notice. The emotions characters in movies and books felt was something Alma wanted to believed existed, so much so in fact that she tricked herself into believing like was love, or something like it.

Years later, she realized what she loved about those individuals was the idea of them, not their actual presence in her life. Imagining the prospect of a boyfriend was more romantic than actually having one; the standards she had created for these imaginary men could never compare to those she met in real life, so it became a greater disappointment when men failed to live up to her expectations because they were already set so high. The romantic heroes in movies and books were far and few in reality.

Alma remembered that her mother spoke of love, and only once, to her fourteen-year-old self on Valentine’s Day when she had received no cards from boys, especially the one she liked: Charles McCaffrey. Her mother called it “tough love”, the kind that wreaked havoc on all the dormant places of the body never before touched, not even by the worst emotions. Love unfurled all kinds of things, she had said, things never before thought, felt or spoken. She continued on to say that love was something Alma had to feel for herself before she gave it to someone else (or took it from someone else). Self-love was the love that would never agonize or depress because it was always reciprocated, because when no one in the world loved her, Alma could always love herself.

At the time, no Valentine’s Day card was about as apocalyptic as life could get, so her mother’s words escaped her as the tears did later that night. But she now understood that projecting a love she couldn’t even feel for herself unto someone else would, disastrously, be rejected. It was a self-esteem issue many young girls and boys wouldn’t overcome until adults, if then. It made sense, of course, now that she was lying beside Illias in a post-coital effervescence that somehow could not cloud such a memory from returning to her.

It was the first time she saw him asleep and she was glad of it. And as Illias slept, she couldn’t help but wonder about other women who had seen him sleep before. She wondered if he touched them like he did to her, if he whispered the same words into their ears. She wanted to know if Illias treated her like the others or if she was a special one; she felt special, if that meant anything.

She pressed her front into his left side and strained to kiss his cheek, her eyes wide and open as she did so. The contact made Illias grumble and throw an arm over his head, the hard lines of his face smoothing out before he fell back into a restful sleep, unmoving. The way his unkempt hair fell into his face made him look younger, boyish; even his stubble didn’t deter the image of a groggy youth sleeping through morning classes.

So what about defining love?

Alma knew she loved her mother, she knew she loved her father and her sister, and she knew she loved her friends; she felt love for her iPod, for heaven’s sake. But when a person realized who they loved, it became clear how to define it; this was how she understood it: for as many times as Alma wanted to kill Samantha, she would kill for Samantha, and thus love was ultimately defined by death.

She then knew that loving someone meant that she would die for them, and Alma – long before she considered the possibility of being in love with Illias – had sacrificed her life for him. She had always confused love for happiness because her parents were happy and they said they loved each other, so automatically, love equated to happiness. However, she had been nothing but unhappy with Illias, a relationship she thought could never evolve into love, and yet, the way she felt at that moment could not be described as anything but love.

What hurt the worst, in the deepest part of her heart, was that, even though she had him now, she could not have him forever – or rather, he could not have her forever. Illias wasn’t hers and he would never be hers; she was right in telling Samantha he was put on earth strictly for looking because, to mortals, he became just a memory. Did she know what that meant? No. Did she know what to do about it? No. Did she know how to handle it? No.

But she did know one very promising thing: looking at him then, asleep with his lashes resting on the pillows that were his cheeks, she couldn’t (and did not want to) imagine herself anywhere else but there beside him in that small, miniscule moment of eternity that was all her own for just those few seconds.

It was the greatest escape to and from reality she had ever known.

“I wish I could take you home,” Alma whispered, hoping his eyes would flutter open and hear him say, let’s go. But he stayed asleep and she figured it was for the better.

Regardless of what she felt and regardless of how well she thought she knew Illias, in the end, they would part ways and never see each other again. And for as much of a daunting thought that was, she was able to push it aside and revel in the moment Illias didn’t know she would carry with her for the rest of her life as the epitome of all great moments.

Never in her life would she feel the same way about a man, or anything else for that matter, other than Illias Galen: her demon, her hero, her love.

I missed writing these two :)

My apologies for the late update; getting back to the States, moving back in and then moving back out for school, starting school . . . the writing mood was a hard one to find in all of that. Hope you had a good read; please do review, especially now that we’re getting into the thick of it. I want to know what you're thinking.

Next chapter: Sal returns!

Until next time . . .