I hardly knew anything yet, except that the next day I wanted nothing more than to see Alistair again. And this time I was ready.

  I was in pain. Very much in pain. Because my back was adorned with a monstrous web of ugly, bleeding stripes. An obscene braided carpet cut into my skin down to my bones. Such was the payback. Devoid of any twisted fantasy, heaven's payback for my decision to stay.

  How many whipshes did I get? I don't remember. I only remember the whip biting into my body over and over again. And I would have endured it. I would have taken it for granted if the hands wielding that whip hadn't been so unbearably old. It was their cold indifferent unfeelingness that made me rebel.

  I believed Alistair.

  I believed him completely and with the whole heart. And I knew I was a hundred times more willing to die by the stroke of his hand than to bear one more touch of heaven. I was punished for my wilfulness, for my doubts, for my feelings. For sensuality. Perhaps they were right, perhaps it was salvation, but not for me!

  Maybe I was too proud to share my bed with the butchers. And I wanted to scream in disgust! But I might have endured even that. If it hadn't been for the silent fall of blond, long, wind-smelling hair to my feet. My hair.

  They cut it off. They didn't want to leave me any chance to save my self. Which I didn't even know existed until I met Alistair. I didn't even have a name! Nothing of my own. But good, okey! I might just as well be lonely. I might be an outcast, a whore on sheets untouched by vice, but they had no right to touch my hair!

  Before I'd lost them, I'd never realized how much their constantly irritating touching meant to me. Their teasing caress as it flowed down my shoulders. Their eagerness to constantly get in my eyes, obstructing my vision. And most of all, how greedily the wind pyed with them. And I realized that this wind, my wind, did not belong to the heaven. This wind was blowing in my soul and there was nothing else holding me back.

  That was their mistake. Though sometimes I think they did it on purpose. Left no path of retreat. I had to choose. And I no longer doubted or feared.

  No, I feared. I feared Alistair wouldn't like me. Afraid he'd push me away like this - bleeding, humiliated, with this senseless hair. With nothing but the powerless rage of a broken stem. I was ready to beg him, to go on my knees for an eternity!

  I raced through those disgusting forest, desperately tearing through the grip of crooked, dried-up limbs. Jumping over roots and dead clods of earth. Several times I stumbled, and only desperate loathing prevented me from stretching under those indifferent trunks.

  By some miracle I kept on my feet, and I was terrified. I could not find that road! I was more frightened than I had ever been before.

  When my feet carried me to the familiar surface of the roadway I cried for joy. And, unable to bear it, I turned away when I saw the bck car. I was ashamed to stand before it. I only moved farther away from the side because it was part of those world. The world I rejected.

  If not for the love of Alistair, I was doomed to be an eternal stranger on that road. It was the only thing I still had. I would have walked it forever, staring at the white line until I was nothing but a shadow of myself. A wandering ghost of that deserted way. And if I ever turned off it, I'd be lost forever.

  Sometimes I think of Ferno and shudder when I imagine his slender figure, topped by the weight of bck wings, on the same road. I can even hear his quiet, doomed footsteps. I can hear the ughter he throws to himself, compelled to step further and further, knowing that this journey will never end. Possibly at one of the crossroads he would turn onto my road and we would meet. I doubt he would have stopped. The touch of our clothes and the intertwining of our breaths would have been enough for him, and he would have passed by. An insane, obsessed, vicious spirit. That could have been me.

  If not Alistair.

  He didn't push me away. As I stood there, head bowed low, tears smearing down my cheeks, he swiftly got out of the car and came toward me. For a second he watched me, and I knew by his look that he understood. I could feel it, though I couldn't see his eyes. I dared not see them. But the next moment I felt his soft touch on my shoulders and I was in his arms. It was all I needed.

  I pressed my whole body against him and burst into tears. He gently stroked my tortured back, and the pain went away. It sought any untouched pce in my soul to hide there, but Alistair mercilessly drove it out. I could feel my wounds healing. I tried to shield my hair with my hands, but he covered my fingers with kisses and I didn't have the strength to resist. I let him bury his lips in them and flinched when I felt his breath. He rubbed his cheek against them, inhaling their scent with pleasure, and I could hear the unconcealed rapture. A rapture that echoed through me.

  ‘I'm ugly,’ I whispered pathetically, but he shook his head.

  ‘You're beautiful, Vic,’ he said. ‘Your hair will grow back soon. If you want it, you can have it like mine.’

  ‘I want it!’ I touched his silky bck strands. I pulled him to me and tentatively touched my lips to his.

  He was incredibly gentle. As gentle as he had never been before. As gentle as he will never be after.....

  ‘Take me with you, Alistair,’ I begged, ‘take me now...’

  He drew away from me and looked intently into my eyes.

  'You will belong to me,' he said, smiling, and I recognized the familiar tantalizing fire.

  ‘I don't know what you're talking about, but I like HOW you're talking about it.....’

  He put his arm around me and led me to the car. He took my jacket from the cabin and threw it over my shoulders, covering the humiliating marks of the flogging. I closed my eyes, enjoying the flow of his desire enveloping me. The world around died to me. I felt its presence only as a haze of wavering, indistinct images from a nightmare. Its shapes melted and slowly faded away, swallowed up by the bckness of his eyes.

  There was nothing and no one but me and him.

  I firmly dropped my jacket onto the dark surface of the road and touched his bare, tattooed shoulder with a thrill. I then slowly stretched out at his feet on the scarlet surface of the lining. Gazing at his steady and strong figure, his fingers with heavy rings, his hair flowing carelessly over his shoulders, and his votile face.

  Alistair watched my movements intently, and the fire in his eyes fred brighter and brighter, taking hold of my desperate soul more and more. I didn't want to hide from him anymore. I didn't want to turn away, I wanted to belong to him. Completely. To melt into him, to merge with him, to learn all that he could give me and never remember the cold and the longing again.

  Alistair leaned toward me, and I groaned as I felt his body. He covered me, pressing me tightly against that scarlet vicious sheet. I knew, knew for sure, that now no one could ever get to me against his will. And I stretched gratefully beneath him, greedily pushing out any void that dared to separate our bodies.

  He cupped his palm over my eyes and kissed me tenderly, deeply. I probably forgot my past then. Forgot everything that could tear me away from his love. Those nguid moments of hot entwining of lips and tongues, the thrilling heat of his possessive movements were the st straw that overflowed the churning ocean of restrained feelings. I almost choked in their frenzied maelstrom. I was drowning in my own moan, which finally awakened the incubus in Alistair.

  He growled, hoarse and eager, and I was thrilled to feel the burning grip of his fingers on my thighs. He ran his hand down my groin, and his lips explored my body, leaving trails of bzing pleasure deep beneath my skin. We tangled together like two ravenous anemones. All I could hear was his heavy, ragged breathing, and I didn't want any sound other than that. He sucked on my nipples like they were the finest of sweets. He was licking my chest, coating it with glistening, thick saliva, and I was sliding into it like a spearhead piercing the covers of a body.

  I felt my own flesh dissolve, one by one shedding the restraining rigid shackles. Alistair seemed distraught. His hands and lips were thrashing up and down. He searched one by one the curves of my body, the weaves of my muscles, the hollow of my belly. He didn't leave them alone until he awakened an answering greed. His hair whipped against my sides, making me shiver with ecstasy.

  I wrapped my legs around his, my thighs touching and rubbing against him invitingly and viciously, willing to make his frenzy even more frenzied. Alistair tormented my mouth, and I responded eagerly, shuddering, sensing that I hadn't yet experienced the full depths of the possible fusion.

  I knew I couldn't stop him this time. Not anymore. He was revelling in me and I was going crazy, driven to a state of insanity. I felt like my voice was unable to withstand the depth of my own moans. Something was happening to my body. I felt myself disappearing into the emptiness around us, vanishing into the fire that surrounded us in a roaring, greedy wall.

  Alistair roughly ripped the ties of my pants and with an elusive swift movement he tore it down and tossed to the curb like a pile of rags that had decayed on a dead body. I was left completely naked. Naked, maddened by a desire, almost crushed by the weight of his body.

  He kissed me once more, then sat down at my feet and hurriedly threw off his own shirt. He devoured me with his eyes for a second, letting my stunned gaze slide down his body. Through some mindless reddish veil, I watched his fair skin accentuated by the perfect curves of muscle, the defiantly arousing nipples, the dark shadow of ascetic chest hairs, the hard quivering belly, and greedily opened lips. I reached for him.

  He smiled and shook his head. He bent down, almost hiding his face with a bck mop of hair, and began to undo the cing of his pants. I felt my face flush with colour. But I couldn't help but stare. Breathless, I watched as the tight bck leather confidently released his hips. As it slid down, as if realizing its own worthlessness, revealing a groin devoid of shame ...

  Humans have very few words to describe the beauty and perfection of anything that can excite the desire for power and obedient belonging that has shaken my soul. You dry up your nguage by preventing it from touching such open depravity. Willing to despise, but cking the piety to do so.

  But I will try. I will try to prolong this moment as long as there are colours in the miserable palette of your feelings, because I do not wish to diminish Alistair. And because we were both bold enough then to take our time.

  I don't want to hurriedly cloak it with the heat of a rekindled embrace, as if that moment of first recognition was a completely unimportant episode of the whole. No, this moment was very important to me and Alistair didn't rush. Freeing his body from his clothes, he paused, allowing me to savour the roiling range of feelings coursing through my soul. Shame, fear, avid interest, a keen desire to touch, a desire to escape, and a desire to explore. To admit his power. To y…

  At first I was shocked. Shocked at the shamelessness he offered himself to me. As if I was supposed to master him. As he lit a cigarette, he moved his hair away from his face and, leaving me to my own self, slowly caressed me with his gaze. I had never seen an erection before, except for myself on that memorable night. I didn't know how beautiful it could be.....

  He was dark, threatening, contrasting menacingly with the light skin of his belly. It seemed so to me in the darkness of the dusk around us. He seemed to exude an invisible poison, surrounded by a fog of phantoms of passion born and dying. I caught the scent, the scent of flesh and the salty juice of life. My fingers against my will reached out to touch. I wrapped my palm around and saw Alistair flinch, exhaling blue cigarette smoke from his lungs.

  He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, allowing me that eager, tentative exploration. I felt as if I were holding a beast that could not resist the caress. I felt like I was holding my own death. I squeezed my eyes shut and touched him with my lips, then pulled away in fear when I heard the click of a cigarette butt hitting the pavement.

  ‘It will be painful,’ I heard Alistair's whisper poisoning any resistance, ‘but you'll cry in pleasure. I'll be able to draw you down, and we'll never part again. Let me take you.’

  He kissed my neck, the thin arc of my colrbones, and I heard his breathing quicken again. I pressed myself against his naked body, and for the first time there was no thin barrier of clothing between us. The power of the incubus swallowed me whole, leaving me with no thoughts and no feelings except those of greedily bared nerves, mercilessly exposed by the flesh of the heaven that had left them.

  ‘Alistair! What am I to do, Alistair?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he whispered, stroking my legs, my back, his hand in my groin, ‘you – do nothing.’

  ‘You won't let me go? You won't leave me like you did back then?’ I asked desperately. ‘If you want me to beg, I'm doing it now. I'm begging you...’

  Alistair covered my mouth with his palm, and I groaned as I felt him greedily, roughly pressing down on top of me. Twisting under him, I frantically cwed my fingers into the asphalt and suddenly felt it sagging. The hard asphalt was becoming soft as butter. It crumbled in my hands, and I could feel it sliding through my fingers.

  I felt Alistair's hands on my hips and, suppressing panic, I thrust myself against him. Desperately, rapidly, because my world suddenly began to unravel. It was rippling like waves, and I began to fall into it. I lost the ground and pressed myself into Alistair's body in terror. The only real and living part of the world. The whole reality was just subsiding under me.

  I threw my head back on his shoulder and felt a rushed but gentle penetration. His penetration into my body. I screamed in pain and horror as I saw the solid heaven beneath me colpse with a howl, sending me tumbling downward. Spinning among the wreckage of what seemed to me an eternal stronghold, into the dark womb of a terrifying abyss. In the arms of a demon maddened by the ecstasy of possession.

  Our bodies merged, and I could feel their greedy friction. A thousand winds whistled around us, tearing, destroying my old flesh. I screamed in pain! It wasn't the kind of pain that every innocent one gets when he agrees to know love for the first time. Such pain I felt many times ter, but it couldn't even partially reflect what I'd experienced then. Alistair had become brutal. He bit into me like a savage beast. His teeth ripped the flesh from my bones, and his body tore me from the inside. The winds of the abyss blew me in all sides like a light pile of sand. I realized I was dying. Tired of struggling, I let myself die ...

  And heard an overwhelming silence. Free-floating without any aim. And I was not alone. Someone was holding me. I felt his skin against my back, the hot breath at my neck, and bck strands tickling my shoulders. A sharp, intoxicating pleasure coursed through my body, bringing it back to life. It ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed, and I nguished with anticipation again, obeying someone else's powerful, self-indulgent movements. And I knew whose.

  ‘Alistair,’ I whispered, sliding in sweat, unable to break away, ‘Alistair...’

  He kissed my neck and gave himself over again to the sensations my new body was giving him. And a hoarse moan filled that self-loving eternity, woven together like the nerves of a single being. I did not know how good it could be, how excruciatingly good it could be! I was as malleable as a newly born, not knowing who he was now. Alistair was creating me. He was sculpting me into something only he alone could see. My crazy, beautiful father in hell…

  I thank you for that. For filling me with your fire, changing me to please your desires, but leaving much of what was only my essence. Our hands intertwined like rays that met. We breathed in unison, my movements an extension of yours. Stunning darkness pierced by the light of a thousand stars rocked us like the limitless softest of beds. When the process of creation was complete, I suddenly felt an avanche of oncoming pleasure. And you let it burst into this new body. Filling it with the shuddering and fierce throbbing of razor-sharp ecstasy.

  You gave me my first orgasm, Alistair, but I didn't know what it was yet. I just screamed in your arms. Then your movements became eager again. Sharp and deep into my body, you burned me with your seed, and I heard your moan. And we no longer belonged separately. Not since I first woke up in your arms. Woke up as the Fallen…