Page 38 of Angels Fall

It’s the devil who has a hold of me now. Complete control over me in this moment. My smile is his smile. The pressure of the pitchfork tines against the sensitive skin of Tyler’s lower abdomen is his doing. The scratches I’m leaving on Tyler’s scarred body—

Tyler’s scarred body.

I glance up at him. He’s breathing hard, his eyes fixed on mine. “Don’t stop,” he says, his voice urging me to resume the punishment. “Do it again.”

I close my eyes for one long second, make a decision, then open them and keep the pressure constant, forcing myself to forget about the scars.

Tyler groans, but he fucks me harder, his cock crashing into my pussy like this is the last time he’ll ever get this chance. And he’s taking it. Embracing it, leaning down to kiss my mouth, until the tines puncture his skin and little pin-pricks of red appear on his flesh.

It’s not fair, I decide. It’s not fair that all his damage is visible and my tragic past is hidden inside.

“You hurt me,” I growl into his kiss. He’s got my knees up to my chin, spreading me open as he slams his body against mine. His cock fully inside me. His balls slapping against my ass, which feels so good. But all wrong. And it makes me sick for a second.

“Hurt me back,” he whispers, still kissing me. Like he can’t stop himself. Like the kiss makes what we’re doing—what he wants me to do—all right. “Get even,” he says. “Take whatever you need from me.”

Selfishness isn’t part of my true nature. I’m a giver. But right now I’m not myself. I’m the devil. I’m pissed off. So angry that I always have to fight for everything. So sick of the struggle. So tired of losing.

And right now all I want to do is take.

I want to take everything from him.

I want to wipe him off this fucking planet.

I want to make him sorry he ever came back to Vegas.

I want to make him leave me, and this city, and never fucking come back.

“Please,” he says. He nips at my lip, gently first, then harder. Insistent. Unyielding. Trying to keep me on task. “Harder,” he says.

I wanna hurt him the way he hurt me, only worse.

I never want to stop hurting him.

I want to lose my temper the way I did with Logan. And just… damage him. Forever. Make him stay down here in purgatory with me. Stuck in an unwinnable existence, caught in the eternal penance he owes me, trapped in the nightmare I’ve been living in since—

“Maddie,” he says. “I said do it!”

I throw the pitchfork aside, dig my fingernails into the tight flesh of his shoulders, and scrape them down his arms until the scratches bleed.

“Yeah,” he groans. “Just like that.”

But then he’s just fucking me harder. And the slap of his balls against my ass just feels better. And his tongue seeks me out, twists us together as I lift my legs a little higher, and spread my knees a little wider. Until he grits his teeth, his body stiff. Like he’s about to come.

And I think—for like half a second—Good. Let’s get this over with. Just come, get off me and—

But his fingers are between my legs. Strumming my clit the way I like it. The way I told him I liked it the last time we were fucking in this alley. And all that bullshit I was just spewing in my head just… floats there. Waiting. Like some ethereal mist that fuels my hate and rage. A cloud of poison that, if I let it, might just dissipate and let the engine die.

And then it does.

Leaving me alone with my self-loathing. And all my losses. The ones I’ve been stacking one on top of another until they became a tower so tall it reaches past heaven. And when the tower wobbles, like it’s gonna fall and crash back to Earth in a pile of rubble that never gets put back together again…I come.

Lying on the trunk of Annie’s car. With Tyler Morgan on top of me. Blood under my fingernails like evidence. Sun shining down on us, illuminating our filthy, sinful souls.

Or maybe… or maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s our shared contrition. Maybe we’re both sorry. Maybe we can let the hurt and anger go and make something new. Something better to take their place. Something beautiful. Maybe we’re both looking for a way out of this fucked-up purgatory we put ourselves in since—

I close my eyes and wish it to be true, just as Tyler pulls out and comes on the front of my devil costume.

My hope dies like the manic desperation after climax.