The images that filled my head left me stunned for a second, for a fraction of a second, really, and then I was running for the shower, intent on fulfilling the erotic images that danced before my mind.
The shower wasn't very large, one of those stall types with just enough room for the two of us to squeeze into it. But I was soaped up and ready for Theo by the time he joined me, fully aroused and filled with a hunger that seemed to echo inside me.
"You're sticky," I said in between kisses, my hands busy rubbing soap on his chest.
"It's the frosting you smeared all over me," he growled, nipping my earlobe. His hands were busy as well, smoothing a soapy washcloth over my back and lower, to my backside, before sliding around my thighs and heading straight for my personal paradise. "I'm not as sticky as you are, though. You're a dirty, dirty girl."
"Oh, yes," I gasped as his fingers danced a soapy dance that had me squirming against him. "I'm very, very dirty."
"It behooves me to clean you up, then," he mumbled against my shoulder.
"Especially since it was you who made me so dirty. Oh, sweet mother, do that again!"
He did. His fingers sank into me, curling ever so slightly until the friction pushed me to the very edge of an orgasm. I teetered there, not wanting to fall alone.
My hands slid lower, lovingly cupping his testicles with one hand while slicking soap down the length of his penis.
His eyes crossed. A sharp, pointy canine nicked my shoulder. He lapped up the blood as my hands moved up and down, quickly finding a rhythm that had his breathing ragged, his hips jerking in time to the movement of my hands. I opened my mind to him, allowing him to feel what his skillful fingers were doing to me at the same time he shared his rising ecstasy. It was a startling feeling, experiencing not only my own passion, but his as well, and it pushed us both higher until we hung with tantalizing agony at the edge of completion.
Theo's fingers stilled inside me, my flesh quivering around them. My hands stopped moving, his penis pulsing with his rapid heartbeat. Our eyes met.
I love you, I told him, pouring my love into him, chasing away the darkness that dwelled where his soul had lived.
You are everything to me, he answered with an honesty so intense it humbled me. I could not exist without you.
An exaggeration, but a sweet one...all rational thought left my mind at that moment. His teeth pierced the skin at the back of my neck, his fingers coming to life inside me. My hands tightened around his penis, and the world supernovaed around us, exploding into a million tiny, brilliant pieces.
It took a long, long time for us to come down from our shared high, but when I did, it was to find myself slumped against him, his hands holding me upright since my legs had failed me. We were both wet, no longer soapy, and as I looked into his somewhat glazed eyes, I made a vow to myself that I would move the earth itself in order to spend the rest of my life with him.
"The penalty for murder in the Court of Divine Blood is eternal, and irrevocable. Only intervention by the sovereign can change it, and that has never happened."
"A death sentence?" I asked, my knuckles white. I relaxed my hands, trying to take in everything Terrin was saying to us. I didn't ask how Theo had found him. I was just grateful that someone was willing to talk to us.
Slowly, sweetling. I will not allow harm to come to you.
I don't think even you can stop the people here if they wanted to hurt me. Can you?
Theo didn't answer me, but his sadness was all too evident.
"Not a death sentence." Terrin paused for a minute, looking from me to Theo. "That is, not in so many words. Your existence would not be destroyed, but you would be...incarcerated."
"Incarcerated here? In the Court?"
I suppose there are worse things in the world than being held prisoner in heaven.
Don't count on it.
Terrin shook his head.
"The Akasha," Theo said. For some reason, I shivered.
What's the Akasha?
It's another name for limbo. It's where banished demons go, a kind of holding cell of misery and eternal nightmare. You do not wish to visit it.
"Yes." Terrin's gaze moved to me. It was frankly assessing, as if he was weighing whether or not I was worthy of his time. Oddly enough, I wasn't offended by this. The days when I would feel outraged over the idea that someone might not consider me an equal seemed like long years ago. I sat, humbly waiting to see what information Terrin was willing to share, well aware that Theo and I were in a particularly precarious position.
Terrin seemed to make up his mind, nodding to himself. "When I conducted your second trial, I questioned your fitness as a virtue. You seemed to possess none of the knowledge, none of the skills needed to achieve success in the Court. And yet, despite the fact that you are charged with the murder of one whom you succeeded, my instincts tell me that you are telling the truth. I have seldom had cause to doubt my instincts, and I am loathe to do so now just because the evidence is to the contrary. The tale you told is unlikely, but not, I believe, impossible."