64. WEN

The Zaar hasn’t worked yet.

For what feels like forever, I’ve been scrunching my eyes shut and flailing my body around like a ragdoll, doing everything I’ve seen Jinny and the other demons do.

And nothing. I haven’t lost myself in the slightest.

I’m even more hyper-aware of every decibel of sound, every vibration of bass, every disturbance of movement.

Guess even a few moments of worry-free existence was too much to hope for. My brain won’t shut up with every anxiety, won’t stop pummeling me with every distraction.

Sarah once read about a medical condition that describes how I feel all the time, something called “low latent inhibition.”

I just think my brain is an asshole.

I squeeze my eyes tighter, refusing to let it win, to make me give up. It only retaliates, making every stimulus even more abrading.

I am about to give up, and to get the Hell out of this madhouse, when it doubles down and floods me. Drowns me. In a universe of details. Of memories and sensations and obsessions.

All steeped in Godric.

Each sinks in a muscle and pulls, until they yank me around like a marionette.

Time slows, like it did so many times since the first night he caught me. Within these molasses moments, everything around me falls away, and for the first time in my life, I lose myself.

I lose myself. Completely. Endlessly. To the freedom of expressing my darkest yearnings. To the release of surrendering to my consuming desires. For his utter domination and destruction.

Then I feel it. A supernova of greed and possession. A voracity that spans existence.

Godric’s.

My eyes fly open, only for my gaze to slam into his across the bedlam between us. What I see in his eyes as he starts walking towards me has my heart teetering inside my chest with both exhilaration and trepidation. It looks as if he wants to …

“Dance with me.”

The demand disorients me. That’s one thing I never expected to hear from Godric, let alone from someone else.

And it’s definitely someone else.

The voice is as deep and dark as his, but I know at once it’s not his mental voice. It’s missing his mind-messing effect. It isn’t his real voice, either, since he’s still in the distance, approaching me like a tidal wave.

Like said devastating force of nature, he seems to be towering higher over the tumult with every step closer.

Is he getting bigger …?

A hand curls around my arm, interrupting my rising alarm.

I look up at its owner, and it’s this guy—Isaac? He’s one of Godric’s Guard, an archangelspawn, too. Son of Uriel?

Whenever I see him, he looks at me with an intensity that I bet can drill holes into me if he wanted. A couple of times I wondered why a man who looks like the Apollo in a Greek Gods’ wet dream elicits no reaction from me. He sure has a legion of groupies, from both sexes.

I shouldn’t wonder things I already know the answer to. He’s not Godric. Period.

Seems all of me, mind, emotions and lady bits have his stamp of ownership.

I wouldn’t mind, if he’d just take what he owns. Being left behind like unclaimed baggage isn’t helping my self-esteem, or sanity.

Which brings me to this hunk of perfection brooding down at me. I did tell Lorcan I’d find someone to relieve me of my inexperience, and though I thought this guy loathed me, from the way he’s looking at me now, he seems to be applying for the—uh, position.

I might have flirted with him and the idea, if Godric wasn’t heading our way. Which makes me even madder at him. He has to spoil everything for me, doesn’t he?

Just like he has spoiled me for anyone else.

He’s now leaving me no other recourse but getting rid of golden and ginormous here. Fast.

Looking back, to gauge how long I have before the Godric Rogue Asteroid makes landfall, I do a double take.

He has stopped, and the reason why has contradictory reactions ricocheting inside me.

It’s Cara. She has intercepted him. On one hand, I’m thankful she’s giving me time to send Mr. Dance With Me on his way. On the other hand, what the Hell is she doing intercepting Godric?

So far, whenever he was in sight, she settled for intense drooling sessions filled with longing glances at him, murderous ones at me, and?—

Fucking Heaven! She’s rubbing a hand down his chest, heading lower, and undulating suggestively against him. And he’s standing there brooding down at her, and letting her paw him!

Oh, no. Not on both their lives.

I take one furious step towards them, only to be yanked back. By the hand that never left my arm.

Putdowns guaranteed to shrivel this guy’s balls off bubble on my tongue—only to jam down my throat when his wings burst out, with the shockwave of a bomb. I would have been blasted away like everyone else in our radius, if not for his death-grip on my arm.

As my feet hit the ground again, my gaze slams around to find others struggling to theirs, many hobbling and bleeding.

“What the Hell, you feathered fucker!” I yell, even as everyone still resumes their rave as if nothing has happened. “You could have killed someone sprouting your chicken wings!”

His hand tightens, pulling me nearer. “I’m showing you my wingspan, so you know what to expect where size is concerned.”

“Wha..?” His meaning sinks in, and I gag. “You didn’t just peacock me, then brag about the relative size of your dick!”

He shrugs, a disturbing darkness swirling in his hazel eyes. “It makes the female wetter when she knows what I have in store for her.”

My mind blanks with images of Godric’s wingspan instead—the largest I’ve ever seen—and the corresponding magnitude of his cock. The cock I might never see, let alone experience its devastating delights.

The despondency snaps my attention back to Isaac. That and the fact that Godric is shoving past Cara.

While it gratifies me that she hasn’t detained him for long, the downside is he’s back zeroing in on me. With a storm of obsidian lightning starting to gather around him.

Urgency jackhammers my heart against my ribcage as I try to extricate my arm from Isaac’s steel-vise grasp. “Listen, Mr. Wingspan—tuck in all your dangly bits, and scram before I …”

“Remove your hand off Cadet White, Isaiah, or I’ll remove it for you. Permanently.”

Godric’s voice inundates me, in delight—and dread.

I’ve never heard him sound so crap-your-pants terrifying. Like a rumbling volcano about to erupt.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.