Celestial Academy: NEXUS
                                                                                 Chapter One

“You can’t hide from me, White.”

 

That voice. The most incredible thing I’ve ever heard. The very sound of compulsions, and endings. Always ringing in my ears, my very being. Never letting me rest. Always challenging me, inflaming me, warping my desires, forging me into something I no longer recognize. 

 

I should have run and never looked back the moment I heard it. 

 

His. 

 

Godric. The bane of my life. 

 

But then, he told me I’m his, too. Being the one thing that he can’t control, or control his reactions to, has become my addiction. Even if it can also end in my destruction. 

 

That would still be an unbelievable upgrade. Until a couple of months ago, I always believed far, far, far lesser things would do me in. Like Kondar, that shit-heap of a demon who owns my Indenture. His favorite pastime has always been flogging me within an inch of my life. The last time I saw his ugly ass, he told me he was replacing me with slaves who actually know their business. He left me in no doubt he would decommission me the day his new acquisitions took over my chores at Demonica. I bet he would have made me sell tickets to my own execution. 

 

If not him, then one of his enemies would have taken me out. With the tons of laws passed by the Accords to limit inter- and intra-species violence, demons consider “Destruction of Property” the least costly way to cause damage, and send threats. But knowing my luck, I would have probably expired in something even more pointless. Like at the hands of some Supernatural or even Select, in a random reaction to my resting fuck-you face. 

 

Bottom line is, I couldn’t have dreamed the danger to my life would one day be that unparalleled terror, the Sword of Heaven himself. 

 

Yet, in that cascade of inexplicable events since he crash-landed in my path and arrested me, I became that. I somehow became worthy of being that level-nine angelhole’s bane. 

 

And what can I say? It feels angel-damned fantastic. 

 

“Be a good bane, White, and stop avoiding me. Open your eyes.”

 

“Must I?” I mumble, and bury my face into something hard and hot, like silk-sheathed steel under a scorching sun. The scents of mint-laced lightning and premium testosterone inundate me, flooding molten heat into my core. I rub my thighs together, trying to assuage the sudden pounding between them, and moan. With worsening arousal, and pervasive soreness. It feels as if I’ve torn every last muscle fiber, and they’re in the throes of regeneration. 

 

It should be a familiar feeling, since that slavedriver has been pushing my body way beyond its limits. His Phase One in my so-called rehabilitation has stopped inches from kicking my mortality’s bucket. The moment I passed it, he whacked me with his reward; the glad tidings of Phase Two. An even more merciless regimen to forge me into the weapon he needs.

But this doesn’t feel like the burn of brutal exertion. It goes far deeper than the physical. As if my very soul has been scraped raw. 

 

What the hell is this all about? 

 

I don’t care. I just want to savor the windfall of his nearness, curl into his infinite strength, and take these moments for myself, before he pushes away and leaves me bereft again. 

 

“You will look at me, White. You will see me.”

 

I remember he said that before. With that same spine-scraping intensity. When or why is what’s missing. Other memories are, too. Major stuff involving him, involving us. Like phantom fruit flies, they keep flitting out of reach.

 

But he, miraculously, is within it. Right here, flesh and power and uniqueness, beneath my cheek, against my body. 

 

I throw my leg over the daunting length of his, my arm convulsing around all I can of him. “Just touch me, damn you!”

 

“You don’t want me to do that.” 

 

I shiver all over, the darkness of his menacing rumble spasming in my sopping wet core. “Oh, I don’t want anything else. If I wanted it more, I’d implode…and engulf you whole.”

 

I remember I said something like this before. If without sexual context. When I did and what I meant, I don’t know. Weird how some things are crystal clear, and others are a blank barrier. Not that it worries me. Nothing seems to penetrate the contentment I feel now. Even when he doesn’t give me what I yearn for. In fact, he doesn’t move at all, doesn’t respond. 

 

The stillness and silence expand, until they’re as deep as the void. The void that feels so familiar, so—fundamental. It’s so easy to disappear within it again…

 

“Do you even know what you’re asking for?” His voice drags me back into my body, plummeting me in its fathomless depths instead. 

 

“A little less conversation, a little more action, please,” I breathe, then giggle, rocking against him to the peppy rhythm of that Elvis song.

 

His inhalation is sharp, the sound cleaving into my own chest. It’s uncanny how every sound that paragon produces, drags some extreme reaction from me. The only good part about this affliction is that it’s mutual. I affect him as acutely, as totally. 

 

My lips spread as I continue undulating against him, singing the next verse breathily against his heaving chest. “All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me.”

 

He suddenly shifts away. Before I can cling to him, pull him back, he comes fully over me. 

 

The sheer brunt of him paralyzes me. Not because he’s crushing me; he must be keeping most of his heavenly body mass off me. Must have activated that hovercraft power of his. No, he’s giving me enough of his bulk and weight to ground me, to secure me. 

 

As if I’d want to move. I’d happily lie beneath him for the rest of my life. 

​

His whisper is like nails scratching deliciously against every itch I ever had. “How’s that for action, my bane?”

 

My whole body bows up, an arch of greed for every inch of him, what he’s deprived me of for what feels like a lifetime. It’s my mind that can’t keep up. It can’t reconcile that he went from not even brushing against me by chance, to full-body imprinting like this. 

 

Air escapes my lungs on a labored gasp as I finally open my eyes. And he’s really there, on top of me, filling my vision and existence. A fringe of midnight silk is raining down his forehead, cheekbones jutting sharper in a face that’s even more ruthlessly breathtaking than ever, and eyes swirling with violent, viridian hunger.

 

Suddenly feeling way over my head, I wheeze, “So, uh, what action is that exactly?”

He grinds down against my belly, a leisurely, deliberate threat of sensual annihilation. I almost black out again at the feel of his intimidating erection digging into my quivering flesh. I stare up at him mutely. Only he has ever been able to silence me. 

 

One arched eyebrow rises, goading, prodding. “Isn’t that what you’ve been after, from that first day?”

 

“Uhh, I didn’t really know what I was after, okay?” I gasp and jerk, like a fish out of water. “I just wanted…”

 

“What you shouldn’t want,” he completes for me when I choke off. “And now that you’ve gotten it, you don’t know how to handle it.”

 

This somehow steadies me, makes me gulp a full breath and glare up into his incendiary eyes. “You suddenly get what I mean without me spelling it out? Sprouted extra powers lately? You a mind-reader now?” 

 

His masterpiece lips twitch in a smirk that erases any annoyance, and sends me revolving in a vortex of lust—and uncertainty. Something isn’t right here. I can’t begin to think what it is. 

Not that it matters. I’m here, beneath the massive object of my delirious desires. That should be enough. 

 

A breath shudders out of my constricted lungs as I nod. “But yeah—that’s it. Wanting something and getting it are Heaven and Hell apart. I always knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Handle you.”

In response, he rocks his hips, driving his hardness in the juncture of my thighs. Even through his sweatpants and my panties, the feel of him makes me start to shake all over. And that’s before he leans in to lick the shell of my ear like the celestial panther that he is. 

 

He nips the lobe, making me jerk all over with the arrow of pleasure that lodges between my legs, before pouring his purr right into my brain. “Then you really should not have pushed and pulled at me, with your every word and glance and breath. You should not have infuriated and inflamed me, and done everything in your probably endless power to destroy my resistance, my very sanity, until I gave in.”

 

My brain fills with error messages, no coherent thoughts, let alone a valid argument forming. My mouth falls open on a moan as garbled as my feelings. One he cuts short with his tongue as it surges between my lips. 

 

He feeds it to me, in languid thrusts, painting my insides with his brand, the only one I ever wanted, or would ever want. I melt beneath him in a puddle of surrender, not knowing what to do, but knowing he doesn’t want me to do anything but let him devour me, drain me. 

 

This. This is what I wanted from that first time. This…invasion, this…merging. My every cell shrieks in delight, in recognition, in greed. For more. All. All of him. Doing it all to me.

Existence swirls out of focus in a haze of heat and lust. My every sense is being soaked to the point of drowning, in his feel and taste. It’s as if my whole body is trying to morph into a more malleable form, so that I can wrap myself around him, take him all inside me. The need is gnawing, clawing. I keen its agony into his lips.

 

With a growl that can melt marrow, without missing a beat in his wrenching, consuming kisses, those fingers that can pulverize steel wrap around my neck. I whimper as they start to squeeze, all my blood hurtling in opposite directions. Half to my head, distorting my consciousness, and the rest to my already molten loins. 

 

It’s like that first day, when I had an orgasm just imagining him doing this to me. My first real orgasm. Soon I won’t be able to breathe. I will black out. But probably not before coming again. 

 

Though all I want now is a release from this distress, and then falling back into oblivion, I can’t let this happen. I’m not coming without him putting his back into it, so to speak. If I did from just a little squeeze around my neck, it would be the ultimate humiliation. No, worse. The ultimate admission of his power over me. And I can’t afford that. No matter what has changed between us since he dragged me into his world on his damned leash, I must maintain our dynamic. This is still a duel. It will remain one, until my last breath. 

 

His hand presses harder on my windpipe as he lets his lips cling to my aching-for-more ones for a last, tantalizing moment, then raises his head. His eyes are now aglow with that terrifying yet intoxicating emerald. Mercury-laced obsidian lightning starts to bleed from the edges of his irises as his knee pushes my legs apart, spreading me wide for his massive bulk. A tortured keen escapes me as every cell in my body revs higher no matter how I try to hold back. 

 

“Still want me to touch you, my bane?” he taunts as he gathers my hands above my head in one of his, his palm engulfing my wrists, holding me there more effectively than iron shackles. I know. I could, and did escape those. I’d never escape his grasp. Being at his non-existent mercy sends my whole body building up to a detonation. 

 

I writhe beneath him, trying to bring him fully down on me again. “I want you to do more than that. I want you to do everything to me.”

 

“Everything? You really have no self-preservation, do you? What if I took you up on your offer, and you ‘couldn’t handle it’? Maybe you should peruse the menu of what awaits you at my hands, before you make such a sweeping declaration?” I try to nod, but he firms his grip, keeping me pinned to the bed. “Do you want me to dominate you, silence your worries, end your challenge, and take away your choice? Do you want me to destroy your inhibitions, bend you to my will, and enslave you to my desires?”

 

I writhe and shudder and sob beneath him. “Yes, yes…all of it.”

 

“Do you want me to invade you, body and soul, fill that ravenous void inside you, and pound you to incoherence, to completion, over and over and over, until I addict you to the ecstasy only I can bring you?” 

 

“Yes, that, all that,” I choke. “Just use smaller words—don’t talk at all. Just do it. Do it all. I’ll die if you don’t take me right now.”

 

“What if you die if I did take you?”

 

“I don’t care.” And I don’t. My whole body is burning up. The emptiness between my legs is pounding at me with a crazed demand that only his flesh can assuage. I need him, in every way, no matter the consequences. “Just put me out of my misery…please. Take me. Finish me. That’s what you want too, from the first time we met.”

 

“Way before then, my bane.” 

 

What does that mean? How could he have wanted me before he met me? 

It might make perfect sense, and I’m the one who can’t understand anything anymore. And who can blame me? With this demigod on top of me, about to take me? It doesn’t matter what he says, anyway. I can listen to him talking gibberish, or even just rumbling, and I’d have mini climaxes with each note out of his mouth. 

 

He releases my hands, only to drag down my body to cup my core. His other hand resumes the pressure on my neck, and my body bucks beneath him without volition, seeking more contact, more friction. He gives it to me, grinding the heel of his palm just where I need. Yet it’s not what I need. The urge to have him inside me overcomes my paralysis, and I finally manage to move my legs, wrap them around his hips. And it’s like I electrocuted him. He jerks, growls, throws his magnificent head back—and bursts into those flames. 

 

Crimson-tinged emerald fire engulfs him like the horrifying Burning Angel I vaguely remember. But unlike that angel, I can still see his face. He looks like himself, yet different, the image of utter hunger and heartlessness. If possible, this only ignites my lust for him higher, stoking the inferno between my legs. I tighten them around his hips, bringing his hardness pressing into me through our clothes.

 

“You know what? You’re right. I shouldn’t have cared either. I should have done this the day I found you. Time to rectify my mistake.”

 

The wickedness lacing his scalding tones, the cruelty crackling in his heart-stopping eyes is too much. Every inch of me tenses up, preparing to burst into a climax that will wreck me. I’m right at the brink when something else sears through the delirium. Something wrong. Very, very wrong. 

He’s no longer shielding me from the brunt of his flames. The realization razes me in the same

second that I hear it. That blood-curdling snap. Of my neck. 

 

It's why I don’t feel a thing as I burn to ashes beneath him.