74. WEN

Not only do I have an insane god on my hands, I have an insanely jealous one. And the object of his jealousy is the last person in all of existence I would have expected.

If I could have ever imagined Godric could harbor such grim resentment, Sarah wouldn’t have made any list as its target. And if anyone had told me before this nightmarish night, that he feels threatened by our history and relationship, I would have laughed their heads off.

But, here we are.

My mind burns rubber trying to latch onto a sound argument to counter his gruesome reasoning. Anything he wouldn’t twist to suit his conviction. I see problems with everything that occurs to me.

It’s the lust gnawing my nerves raw making it hard to think at all. But if I say nothing, he might consider I rested “my case,” and continue his murder spree.

Grabbing his face in trembling, sweaty hands, I will him with everything inside me, everything between us, to listen, to forget anything else but me. “I don’t get how you see I’ve been prioritizing her, since I’m positive I haven’t been. But if it seems that way to you, it’s probably like the saying demon mothers have of their preferred child; the sick until they heal, the weak until they harden. And between the two of you, she’s the vulnerable one.”

The look he gives me says I said the absolute wrong thing, again. “And because you think I”m invulnerable, I’ll never have equal billing.”

Feeling as if my organs are trying to strangle each other, I press his face harder. “I don’t think you’re invulnerable, Godric! I felt your suffering when you came back. It went way beyond the physical. You felt—fractured on levels that agonized me. I don’t know what you were doing or who could do this to you, but that ordeal taught me two things. That because you can survive almost anything, you suffer to greater depths and intensities than those of us who would just perish could ever imagine. The second, and the worst part, is that I now know you’re not indestructible.”

Once I fall silent, he huffs. “I’m still way more durable than her. That’s why she’ll remain your focus. Because of your history, she’ll always be the only person who can make you do anything. As long as she lives.”

“And I will do anything, so she continues to live. So if you think taking her out would eliminate her imaginary threat to you, you’d only make sure it becomes real. I would never be with you if you hurt her.”

The ice and fire in his eyes fade to fog as he contemplates my words. “Now this is a dilemma. I eliminate threats to my purposes. I’ve never had a threat and purpose so inextricably intertwined.”

“Well, they are. If you want me, you will never even think of harming her. You will defend her with your archangel-damned, Level-Nine life!”

The banked derangement rises in his gaze again. “I’m not convinced. I play the longest of games, my bane. I still think eliminating her, all of them really, is in my best interests. It’s very much in yours, too. They’re a liability and a threat to you, more than to me, in ways only I realize, having been there myself. Once ‘I take them out,’ I can wait for you to come around to that realization, and to forgive me for it, however long that takes.”

I tighten my grip on his face and my legs around his hips until I feel I’d shatter my own bones. “Then you’d be waiting for the rest of my life. I’d go to my grave hating you if you harm them. You haven’t so far, not on purpose, but do anything premeditated, cross that line, like you did with your men and?—”

“They are not—were not my men.” He looks over his shoulder at the scene of mayhem, and revs a chuckle that sends a storm of need needling across my flesh. “That said, in response to the same threat to you, I probably would have slaughtered my own men. I only regret not taking my time doling out unending agony beforehand. And that I didn’t kill them all. Many will survive—until I decide whether they were part of this mutiny or not. I informed them that if I decide they were, I’d hand them over to you to snuff out. Live subjects to unleash your Null powers on are the best training, after all.”

My horrified exclamation is cut short, swallowed, in his mouth, as he gathers me to him and devours my lips.

His macabre declaration and everything else drowns, in his taste, in his domination, in the whirlpool of sensation pulling me under.

I’m hovering on the razor edge of a climax that I feel would tear me apart, when he stops.

Raising his head, he looks back at the girls and sighs. “Though my need to fuck you is equaled only by yours to be fucked by me, I need to resolve this issue first.”

My arms and legs convulse around him, feeling as if I’m trying to keep an avalanche in check. “What you need to do is help me take them to the Sanatorium. They’re not a liability or threat to either of us. They only helped me. They saved me. I owe them my life.”

In the next booming heartbeat, a meteor of ferocity shoots across his irises, and he grows even bigger. His expanding mass forces my legs to snap off his hips, sending me sliding limply off him. When my feet hit the ground, I don’t find my legs beneath me and crumple at his.

He looms over me, a skyscraper of menace, the storm of obsidian lightning emanating from him engulfing me in perfect agony. Another wave of delirium washes over me until all I want to do is lie back, spread my legs and beg for him.

Before I give in, he rumbles, “You keep giving me reasons to eliminate them.”

“What the fuck are you talking about now, you deranged Angelhole?” I croak.

“A life debt makes their danger to you even more imminent. I refuse to have you owing them that much.”

Unable to sit up, I slide back until my elbows hit the floor. “It’s okay if I do. They owe me their lives, too. There’s no ledger between friends.”

He cocks his head at me, a merciless smile tugging at his lips. “Are they your friends, my bane?”

“Sarah is my sister. Matt is certainly my friend. The others—we’re getting there.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, we are. They stood up for me when this whole Null business blew up.”

“Only because it benefits them. As your Unitas, they lose standing and respect if they don’t stand up for their teammates. While your ‘sister’ only loved you because she had no one else. Now she’s no longer powerless and isolated, with you as her only source of company and protection, she’s pulling away more every day. She’s changing, and it won’t be long before you no longer recognize her, and she no longer needs you. Before she leaves you behind.”

I stare at him as a bleak coldness creeps up from my unfathomable depths, dousing my lust and turning my nerves to brittle ice.

When I can speak again, my voice is a smothered whisper. “That was cruel, Godawful.”

“I am cruel. You’re just realizing that now?”

“Let me rephrase that. That was petty.”

Self-deprecation softens the dead calmness of his expression. “When it comes to you, I’ve discovered I’ve become that, too. And every other moronic and pathetic thing in existence. Which part of ‘you ruined me’ didn’t you understand?”

“Yeah, even though you’re fucking bonkers right now, I now believe you don’t throw around words you don’t mean.” I slump back, wishing I can just close my filling eyes and slip into the void as I whisper, “Do you mean that, too? You really think that none of it could have been for me? I’m so unbearable no one can have feelings for me?”

“They can have feelings for anyone else.” Darkness exudes from him, like the sooty clouds of expiring lives and scorching flesh I’d seen rising from burning bodies. It feels like tempestuous emotions made visible. “I never had anything that was mine, never wanted anyone to be mine. Then there was you. And I learned what it was to covet, to crave. When I say my bane, it’s no exaggeration. You’re a curse. My curse. And you’re mine to suffer, to wallow in, to devour, to destroy. All mine.”

Any other time, hearing this would have exhilarated me. Even with the terrible price and mind-numbing threat weaved into being desired by him, I wouldn’t want it any other way. My feelings for him are intertwined with the same extremes and lethality.

But if I ever go berserk over him, the worst I could do is yank a few Life Essences and put a handful of Angelbloods in a coma. Even if I ended up killing a dozen, a hundred, it would still be nothing to his damage potential.

I always likened him to a force of nature. Right now, he’s way worse than any. He’s horny, obsessive destruction incarnate.

I’m out of ways to stop him from acting on his insanity. Unless I do what I told Jinny I’d never do. Use sex.

This isn’t how I wanted him, at all, and especially not the first time, with both of us under the influence. But if I have any hope of distracting him—defusing him, letting him fuck me is my last resort.

I have a feeling he hasn’t yet because he’s been waiting for me to ask him to do it. No, to demand it. I was right about that at least. Even unleashed, Godric is still pro-consent.

“Show me,” I blurt out as he turns away to the targets of his hyper-emotional and coldly cerebral pragmatism. “Show me how I’m yours.”

He stops, but doesn’t turn. “In a moment.”

“No, Godric, now.”

He looks over his shoulder, his heart-stopping face literally glowing with gratification. “Can’t wait a few more minutes, my demanding bane?”

“It’s been months of agonizing frustration, you monstrous tease.”

He turns now, but doesn’t walk back to me. I would have gone after him, but can only lean back further, spreading myself for him. I reach out my arms for good measure, hurrying him to pick me up.

He remains standing there, probably ten-feet tall by now, examining me, and anxiety starts snapping my nerves one at a time.

He’s seeing through my ploy, and won’t come to me. At least not before he finishes his grisly task. I have to up my game.

Shaking, I prop myself up on my elbows, and impale him with my most inflammatory expression. “What’s the holdup, Chicken Wings? Worried your performance won’t live up to all those inflated promises?”

His chuckle vibrates the ground beneath me, spreading more cracks through it. “Never a dull moment. A constant sear to my senses and sanity. You won’t even relent in my sleep—that is, when you let me sleep.”

“Same here, pal. It’s high time you did something, a lot of things, to vent this unbearable tension.”

“If you think after I do ‘lots of things’ to you, it won’t only make the tension a thousand times worse, you are indeed an oblivious novice. It will only turn the obsession into an addiction.”

“I know you don’t use your daddy’s name as a surname, but I propose a middle one—Doom’n’Gloom.”

“Oh, I have many middle and surnames now, thanks to you,” he says, his amusement reverberating in my cells, making every one collide with its neighbor. “I’m partial to Angelhole. Aggravating Monster is climbing up the ranks. Now Monstrous Tease has entered the competition.”

I was already pinned to the ground by the brunt of his hunger. This yanks out mine from where I tried to shove it down, bringing it pummeling out of my depths.

Then he makes it infinitely worse.

Voice dropping into the darkest, deepest, most intimate rumble I’ve ever heard, he says, “But I’m really considering changing my first name to Godawful.”

Then he drops down to the ground, and prowls towards me—on all fours.