Desiderium – Monsters, the First Ch 7
rent-a-moose / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA
My #WedPeeks post for this week is chapter seven of my new novella, scheduled for release this October. Desiderium is a dark fantasy/horror and is for mature readers.
*Warning: There is violence, sex, and a lot of profanity in these pages.
~ SEVEN ~
Release
If I had stayed in bed, everything would have been fine. But I woke up around midnight and could not get back to sleep. I tried, believe me. I was exhausted from night after night of not sleeping. But regardless, I found myself downstairs pulling on a pair of shoes and heading out the door.
It was Friday night, or at least what remained of it. The regularly spaced puddles of lamplight were the only illumination in the dark street. The moon was hidden from view by a heavy fog that blanketed the city. I headed towards the same alley around the same building that somehow changed everything in my life to shit. I was feeling jittery, anxious but also angry and in the mood to push boundaries.
It’s a poor area, the buildings covered with graffiti and the windows mostly busted out. A couple of the buildings actually look as if they would topple over with the lightest touch. Garbage was scattered all along the road as usual, and piled up along the sides. Age, disuse, and depression gather here like shadow gathers at the edge of light. I can feel it pressing in on me like cold, sodden clothing. Clothing I’ll never be able to take off.
It was a second’s thoughtless action. A quick glance down that narrow alley as I strode by. That glance was my undoing.
She sat there, small and alone, halfway up the first block of the alley. She sat on that ledge. One of her legs was bent up on the ledge with her, the other dangling to the ground below, her foot tapping a nervous rhythm. Her skirt gathered in the gap between her legs, exposing pale thighs. A cigarette dangled from one hand, resting listlessly on her raised knee. She was looking directly at me as if she’d been sitting there waiting for me to walk by, and she didn’t blink at my appearance. Her hair was luxuriously thick and long. It was mussed, as if it hadn’t been brushed for days. Her makeup was dark and heavy, smeared as if she’d been crying, or maybe fucking. She wore a thin shirt and no bra, her breasts clearly visible through the thin material.
Despite her disheveled appearance, or maybe because of it, she was stunningly beautiful. Her dark hair framed perfectly formed pixie features, and the heavy black lining brought the rich greenness of her eyes into sharp contrast. She seemed so small, lost, helpless. In the drifting fog she looked like a nymph, transparent and wispy—but one of oil slicks and concrete and broken glass instead of cool forest streams and shady green groves. I half-thought she would fade into the night as I approached.
Don’t go near her, a small voice whispered inside my head. Trouble is sitting on that ledge tonight. Walk by, leave her be. But somehow I knew this woman had something I needed. She held a key to the mystery of Blake’s death. Don’t ask me how I knew or what made me suspect. I just did. I knew it with a cold certainty.
A scent—that scent—was hovering in that alley. That amazing erotic muskiness, and I felt certain it was coming from her. She sat unmoving as I approached, not even a twitch save for her eyes as they followed my progress up the alleyway. I came up alongside her and waited for several long breaths, studying her.
I knelt beside her and reached a hand toward her. Her eyes shifted to my hand. She gave no other indication of movement, but my hand froze and I could feel my balls rise into my gut. I felt real danger emanating from her, and I pulled my hand back. Her eyes met mine.
That musky scent was getting stronger and stronger, and I could barely breathe as I stared. She looked through me, beyond me, and I felt as if she weighed what she saw there as I struggled to keep my wits while desire bubbled up, threatening to overwhelm me. It felt like something was taking control of me against my will, but I didn’t want to put a stop to it even if I knew how. I thought of the fey powers of the fairy folk from the fantasy novels I read. I had dismissed such things long ago, but caught in her gaze, and captivated by that heavenly scent, I wondered.
“There are many things that go bump in the night, Terryn. I am one of them.”
Her voice was soft, rich, and loamy. I thought of the forests I had hiked through in Oregon. Thick fertile soil, towering trees draped in green and water dripping incessantly from above. Then I thought of the dank, trashy smell of garbage dumps, of smoky vehicle exhaust, the grimy smell of the city. What I’d imagine the taste of that dark film that coats the bottom of your shoes after walking through the city on a wet night would be like. The funky smell of my dick the morning after a night of epic fucking.
Goosebumps rose on my arms and my fingers tingled. My stomach clenched more tightly as she stared at me, unmoving, her eyes wide and liquid.
“There is such animal in you. It is in all of you, you can’t escape it, or control it,” the girl purred. “Oh, you struggle so to keep it contained but it just waits, always ready to roar back and take over. I have seen it in the eyes of those who turn away. I have smelled it on you, and I have tasted it on the men sweating and grunting above me. It only needs the teeniest bit of prompting, Terryn.”
Her voice was the most captivating sound I’d ever heard. The image she painted with her words made me uncomfortably aware of her body—the long stretch of exposed thigh and the curve of her breasts so clearly displayed beneath that thin top. Oh my god, I wanted her, and with the few tattered shreds of control that remained to me I shifted away, thinking of the sense of threat that had come from her when I first reached out my hand.
“Humanity is just a thin veneer over the heart of a beast. It is so easily stripped away when the opportunity presents.”
“How…” I had to stop to clear my throat before I could continue. “How do you know my name?”
She gave a short laugh, deep and throaty. “I know you,” she said. “At least, I knew someone once who was a lot like you. He, also, wanted to awaken the beast within and free himself from the bonds of humanity. He sought me, just as you do.”
I shuddered—a deep quake that made my knees feel weak and my muscles shaky. My brother, I thought. She knew Blake.
“Yes,” she said, as if she had heard my thoughts. Perhaps she had.
“I am hungry.” She continued almost lazily, reaching toward me. Her hand found the hard bulge in my pants and grasped. “You desire me as well. I can offer you the escape you seek, if you choose to follow. Would you like to see what happens when you leave everything behind? When you truly let go? I can show you. I can take you there, Terryn, if you want to come. But only if you truly want to see.”
That heady scent surrounded me in a cloud of desire, and those black-lined eyes grew deeper and wider. I felt myself falling toward her, my already hard cock throbbing against her hand. I knew it was wrong—somewhere inside me a voice was crying out that I was in danger—but that voice, and that body, that scent. I would go anywhere with her. I would do anything to be with her. I wanted to see what she offered. I wanted to slip the cuffs of humanity and travel with her to places yet unexplored, even if I had to break both thumbs to do so. I had been seeking darkness for over two years, and in this woman, I had found it.
“Sophie.” The name floated fleetingly across my mind, but fell quickly aside as another wave of that heavenly scent washed over me.
There are a million things that I once wanted and sought. And there are a million more I would do if given the chance. But right then, all I wanted to do was her.
Somehow, she had risen and pulled me up with her without me noticing. She tugged me gently toward a doorway next to where she had been sitting. Darkness cloaked us as we walked through the doorway. “I can’t see,” I whispered to her. She laughed and pulled me more insistently toward her.
“Don’t worry, I won’t let you hurt yourself. I wouldn’t waste you that way.”
We climbed stairs for what seemed an eternity. All I could think of was getting her beneath me, or above me. I wasn’t picky. And goddamn, it was taking a long time to get to wherever she was leading us.
Finally, she pushed me down and I felt a soft bed beneath me. My clothes were gone—I had no recollection of taking them off. I still couldn’t see anything, but I cared little for that. All I cared about was the feel of her climbing on top of me and wrapping her legs around my middle. All I cared about was the scent of her in my nostrils and the heat of her around my dick.
Finally, no judgment, no pretending, I could let myself go, wander at last into that darkness that I had sought for so long. I opened myself entirely and let her consume me as waves of pleasure washed over me again and again.
