Book 2 The Gods of Light and Liars

Chapter 34: Stolen

She expected something rash, rushing, and hot. As if she were being claimed with or without her say-so. Coarse, harsh, hateful. Another part of her expected Alex's brazen confidence, even as he respected her consent. That was the fear life kneaded into women, pressed into their shape like thumbprints. 

But Shadow's touch was nothing like that at all. He was gentle, his touch trembling, even as it came wire-tight. Sweet as dew caught on a spider's web, and that soft hush of blue across morning grass. Cold because it fears warmth's abandonment. Already withdrawn, even as the invitation is felt across the lips.

It awoke a storm within her, as fierce as any hurricane, ravenous and lust-starved. And it wasn't entirely hers. She felt the shadows of his wanting pass through her, like sand slipping through a clenched fist. Longing beyond longing, a want that could encompass the world...and a love that kept it all in check.

"There's no hope for it," Shadow whispered, as she came back to herself. "I know it. But there's that part that always hopes, yes? That part won't stop dreaming, even when you know hope was...not even lost, because it was never there."

His eyes, so strange and alien, were also so incredibly sad.

"You should have asked me first," She said.

"Yes. And then you'd say no and be horrified. But now you can say you've been kissed by whatever it is I am and you've survived." He had a bit of an accent. Odd complexities on vowels and consonants. "It's quite a thing to boast about, here. I imagine it would be such in the God-world, too."

"It wouldn't be. We don't have Gods there." She paused as several thousand years of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hindu, Pagan revivals and utterances she'd never encountered all rose up to throttle her subconsious. "I mean, we have gods—we have Religion—but we...we don't have things..." she stopped herself. Hard. "We don't have people like you up there, much."

"Things is a better term, isn't it? I'm singular and regarded as a commodity. I'm a fifth of what I ought to be, and I feel it." A pause. "People don't get carved down to little more than rind in the hands of ambition."

"I don't know. You might want to ask Kaiser Willheim how his warehouse workers feel." She sighed and forced herself to turn away. She didn't want to. She wanted to take his hands in hers and start talking. Tell him everything. About home, about their home, their pedestrian normal lives, a tale of a couch that had seen better days, of mismatched kitchen utensils and streaming Netflix while someone burns the popcorn. Normal drawn so thick with words that it bleeds, and she could give it to him. His kiss...oh, god, he was craving it.

And what would happen if she gave in? Where would her satisfaction end? With Kaiser Willheim and a gun. Maybe a nice, dark Sig-Saur .45, maybe a Glock. Maybe he was fancy and had a six-shooter to go with his cowboy act. Or he'd dress the gun up to look like a grant, like a job, like a dream. It would still end up against Hawk's head, as Kaiser ordered this man to do whatever he wanted.

And she'd thought she'd be working with an adamant wall, that he'd hate her the way Nasheth hated her, the way the Earth Archon hated everything that wasn't the goddess that maimed her. But Shadow was raw with wanting. A longing for friends, for love, or maybe more, a blanket desire for a life that was not what he had down here in the hole. He said he was a fifth of what he ought to be, and it was this place that had done it.

What would be left, if she let him love her? If she loved him openly as desperately as she did, right now? A sixth? A seventh? Less than that? And there came a horrifying vision of the Apes' orb, beautiful save for the bullet wound in it, divided into a thousand small pieces. Little bites, like she'd get from a Pez dispenser. God-hood in a little silvery wrapper. Aluminum foil, that's what it'd be. God as a lemon drop.