The Third Throne: Angel of Darkness (8 page)

Mine, and no one else’s
, he vowed to himself.  He would kill anyone who laid a finger on her.

His hands moved back to her luscious breasts and carefully squeezed one lightly at first, making her jump, but then more aggressively, which made her lean in for more.  He noticed that she too was trembling; he’d thought it was his body moving hers.  He thrust his tongue into her mouth and nearly came like a teenager.  Her mouth was pure heat and desire.  She gave no resistance to him and moved along with him, enticing him further.  He realized that her hand was still on his chest and not moving over his body as everyone else did.  Once Lucifer kissed someone, they were his and they complied.  They were fearful of him and did what he wanted, pretending to enjoy it.  Yet she stayed close to him, touching his chest, but nothing more.  He needed to remedy the situation.  He wanted her hands on him.

A rough hand came down on her shoulder and forced her down to her knees, as their kiss was broken.

On to the main event
, Michelle thought, swallowing roughly.

Lucifer’s face showed the most emotion to date as he watched her with wide eyes and lips parted in a pant.  He looked younger; all his stress lines were gone.  He practically glowed.

“You will please me now,” Lucifer hissed while holding her in place on her knees.  He didn’t take his eyes off her for fear that she was a dream.  One of his best dreams by far, but he wanted reality, not a dream.  His body was humming and needed her touch.

Michelle had been on fire, not the typical kind of fire, but the good kind.  Who knew such a thing existed?  She had been afraid when Lucifer first touched her, but when he trailed his hand down her cleavage, something opened up inside of her.  Pure desire filled her and she gained strength from it.  When he kissed her, she embraced the kiss and rejoiced in the passion that it invoked.  In the beginning, his lips were bruising, but she enjoyed it.  Her knees gave out when his tongue rubbed against hers.  Thankfully, he had a good grip on her arm.  She was surprised to hear herself moaning.  She never thought she would want Lucifer to touch her, but when his hand was on her breast, she could feel her core coming to life.  She’d never known want before, not like this.  Everything that came before this was merely girlish curiosity.  This was the real thing.  She felt hot liquid rush through her core and down her leg.  She should have been embarrassed, but she wanted more.  She was too warm and achy between her legs and thought about what it would be like for him to move his hands down to the other slit in her dress, the one she no longer considered ridiculous.  Then his hand had pushed her down to her knees and passion was quickly replaced by terror, afraid that Lucifer would force himself on her.

Michelle’s breath caught in her throat.  She looked straight ahead to his leather pants and saw the huge bulge practically ripping through the leather.

Oh…dear…Lord.  He’s enormous
, she thought to herself.

Her lust-filled bravery was gone and her nervousness returned.  She’d never even seen a naked man before, nor had she ever touched one. Her fear tripled when she thought she might do something wrong and enrage him.  She had no idea what she was expected to do, take him in her hand or her mouth.  She wasn’t sure that he would fit in either.

Lucifer became impatient and pulled at his pants while still holding her shoulder.  His grip tightened as he made his way through the button and zipper.  There were no other layers to Michelle’s dismay.  His large full erection sprang forward and practically hit her in the face.

She took a second to gaze upon Lucifer, in all his glory, and was startlingly in awe.  It was nothing like she’d imaged when she pictured CJ or any of the other boys.  Certainly not like the health videos and diagrams from class.  Lucifer was a man, and it showed.  She wasn’t quite sure where to start first.

Lucifer’s growl was her only warning.  There would be consequences soon, she realized.  She took a breath and reached out tentatively to brush her fingers against his long shaft.  Lucifer jerked as if she’d hit him.  She immediately stopped and moved back, bracing to be slapped or shouted at.  Instead, Lucifer grabbed her hand and forcefully wrapped it completely around his shaft.

“More.  Keep going,” he grunted, more animal than man.

Apparently being hit was a good thing.  She moved her hand up and down his hard shaft and watched his head fly back.  Snarls erupted from this throat.  She started to relax as the soft sensation of his skin caught her attention.  While he was harder than the stone walls around her, his skin was amazingly smooth.  She had no idea.  She flushed with embarrassment when she decided to move her hand over the thick ridge that separated the head from the shaft.  She was curious to see what it felt like.  She wet her lips at the thought and tightened her hand around him. The head molded to her hand and she tightened her grip even more, afraid that he would fall out of her hand.

Lucifer shouted and howled as she continued to rub him.  He thrust violently into her hand, so much so that she had to stop moving and let him do the work, or her hand would leave him.  She watched him close his eyes and moan.  She was doing this.  She was making Lucifer feel good.  Admittedly, she was seriously turned on.  The moaning made her skin tingle and her body grew even warmer.  She noticed that her breasts were more sensitive against her clothes and felt fuller.  She watched with fascination as his hard thick length plunged into and out of her hand.  She wanted to know what it would feel like if he were inside of her.

Without warning, her hand was pulled away and his hand was on the back of her neck, pulling her closer.  Lucifer demanded entrance has he slammed against her mouth.  She had little option but to comply.  She took his smooth, full head into her mouth and reveled in the feeling.  She had no idea she would actually enjoy having an erection in her mouth.  He was smooth and warm.  She rolled her tongue around the full head while Lucifer moaned and jerked.  She explored the intriguing slit with her tongue and was rewarded with the salty evidence of his enjoyment.  Lucifer pushed further into her mouth and she closed her lips around him.  She slid her tongue back and forth over him slowly as she moved her mouth across him a few times.  She sucked in her cheeks to squeeze him.

Lucifer removed his hand from her shoulder and entangled it in her hair.  He didn’t hurt her; he merely hung on to her.  She quickened her pace when she found a rhythm he seemed to enjoy.  She looked up and saw him watching her mouth as he slid in and out.  He appeared mesmerized by what she was doing.  She felt pride in her ability to please him, despite not having the adequate knowledge and experience she thought she needed.  Lucifer’s body suddenly jerked and tightened.  He quickly pulled away and slammed into the stone wall behind him.  He released his desire onto the floor as he growled and shook.  When it was over, he fell to his knees.

Michelle scrambled to her feet quickly.  Her body was shaking, though not from fear this time.  She liked watching him spill onto the floor.  Her body was uncomfortable and throbbing.  She wanted to be touched, but she wasn’t sure how Lucifer would react if she moved closer.

He remained on the floor for a few minutes trying to calm his breathing.  He slowly lifted his head to look at her.

The first thing she noticed was his eyes.  Instead of black and soulless, they were lighter, almost blue and filled with emotion.  The second thing she noticed was the tear running down his cheek.  She was shocked.  Lucifer was crying?  The third thing she noticed was that his hair was also lighter.  Instead of dark brown, it was almost a golden brown.

Lucifer jerked to his feet and grabbed his pants from around his ankles.  He quickly redressed, but didn’t speak.  He looked at her as if he’d seen a ghost.

She reached out to comfort him or something, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but he backed away like a terrified animal.  Before she could get a word out, he waved his hand at the door and ran out, slamming the door behind him
.

Staring at the door, she was completely dumbfounded.  Lucifer had just run away from her.  Why had he run?  His reaction was unexpected and disconcerting, and definitely not what she had expected.

It took Michelle awhile to calm herself.  She replayed the encounter over and over again.  It was certainly nothing like her fantasies with CJ.  She had pictured doing the same thing to CJ, though it never ended there. Fantasy CJ was kind and left her satisfied. Lucifer was obviously a selfish lover, but then again, what did she expect?  In the real world, she was left yearning for more, while her lover ran away.  Regardless, she liked doing that to him and was open to the possibility of doing it again.  After his bizarre reaction, she wasn’t sure he would want her to touch him.

She had clearly pleased him physically; the evidence was still on the floor.  He said that he didn’t care if she enjoyed herself, though he would enjoy it, yet he’d looked freaked by what happened.  It didn’t make any sense.  He was frightened at the end, not pleased.  And why did his eyes and hair color change?

She’d had her first sexual experience and she was left unfulfilled and confused, though, all things considered, it could have been much worse.  While he did hurt her shoulder, which was surely bruised, and bit her lip a little, she was relatively unharmed.  Even when he was in her mouth, he didn’t try to choke her, which she had been concerned about.

Surprised by her yearning, she had no idea that she was capable of such a reaction, especially with a stranger.  Lucifer was attractive, but it was something else.  His movements had been fierce when he first touched her and kissed her, but passion had quickly taken over and he had touched her with care.  It was his touch that had made her body come to life.  She had been drawn to his passion and wanted more.  It didn’t matter that he was the devil; she just wanted his hands on her body.

She sat down on her bed, not really sure what she should do next.  A sound at her door answered her question.

Her door burst open and Caleb rushed toward her.  Still having no tongue in his head, he grabbed her and pulled her out of the room.  Caleb looked frightened so she didn’t think too much about where they were headed.  She assumed Lucifer had come to his senses and called for her.

He pulled her from her room, but they didn’t go back up to the Throne Room.  They went down.  At the bottom of the staircase was a landing that didn’t appear to have any doors or openings.  The walls were solid.

“Where are you taking me?” she gasped as Caleb turned on her and stared at her.

His demeanor was intense and cold.  He was on the short side and thin with a harsh mouth.  His nose looked permanently broken and askew.  His dull blue eyes bore into her.  She wasn’t sure what she had done to deserve his anger.

Flashes of his past blinded her for a moment.  He had been a spy during WWII, for the side that had lost.  He had been discovered and was held prisoner.  He was about to be executed for espionage when he made a deal with Lucifer.  Many innocent lives were lost due to his deal.  Of course, he hadn’t fared any better than Aganon in his afterlife, or hers, as it seemed.

Caleb glared at her and then walked straight into the solid stone wall at the back of the landing under the stairs and disappeared, except for the arm that was still pulling her.  She tried to hold herself back, but lost her balance when she was forced to put her hand against what looked like a solid wall and tumbled forward out of the castle.  She landed in a small opening surrounded by boulders.

Caleb pulled her along a narrow path that ran along the castle wall.  Before she could get her bearings, she was whisked out into the enormous underground that held all the Realms of Hell.  She was surrounded by the realms for as far as the eye could see and beyond. At least she knew where she was. Well beyond the realms were rock walls that reached on forever.  In the rocks were large cracks that lead to caves where the truly terrible monsters roamed.  While she had figured out some of the names of the realms or the types of people receiving the punishment in them, she still didn’t know what went on inside the caves.

All the realms were the size of multiple football fields and contained overwhelming amounts of people in them.  Most of the prisoners writhed on the ground or tried to dodge the punishers.  Their screams made it impossible to hear anything else.  Their faces were unrecognizable through the pain, tears, and blood.  They all looked the same, gray, tattered, bleeding, and in disbelief.

Caleb pulled her past the Realm of Frost, toward the Realm of Thorns.  He tightened his grip, lowered his head, and pulled her closer to the edge.  She tried to pry his hand off her to no avail.  She noticed along the way that the demons or the punishers were starting to notice them, despite being focused on their work.

She remembered Lucifer saying that only Fallen Angels worked in Hell.  All these years she had assumed they were demons or creatures of evil.  All the stories said that the angels had been cast out of Heaven and sent to Hell.  She had assumed they were now demons.  Apparently, the stories were not correct on this point.  They also weren’t gods like in Greek Mythology.  She had seen some of the punishers with their black wings unfolded when they scoop up escaped souls and toss them back in, but she never wanted to believe that they were actually angels.

The Fallen Angels all turned one by one and looked at her.  Some were startled, others looked stunned, and some laughed.  None of the angels tried to stop them, until they reached the edge of the Realm of Thorns.  The angel in charge of the realm took one look at Michelle and threw his hands up to stop them.  He shook his head violently at Caleb.

The punisher’s face looked young, but his eyes told his age.  He was wiser and more world-weary than his smooth face implied.  He was paler than the other angels were, and had shaggy dark hair that was swept across his forehead, which emphasized his bright gray eyes.  He was dressed in leather pants, but appeared more modern with a black T-shirt.  If she had met him on the street, she would have thought him to be in his twenties.  She had seen him many times before and was certain his name was Cyrus.

Caleb glared at Cyrus, and continued to drag her toward the edge.

Cyrus stopped them again, screaming something in a different language.  She had assumed it was some kind of demonic language, but it must have been the language of the angels.  It was a language that all of them understood, though not all of them spoke aloud.

Caleb waved at Cyrus, trying to cut off his rant.  He pulled Michelle closer, and lifted her sleeve to reveal the scars on her wrist.

Cyrus stopped mid-sentence and stared incredulously at the scars.  He looked back up at her again and pointed to the dress.

Caleb shook his head again, clearly annoyed, and shoved Michelle’s wrist into the angel’s face.  Given that Caleb was missing his tongue for reasons such as disobedience or talking back, Michelle figured that the servant wouldn’t easily give up on his task.  What would he lose next, an ear?

“I’m not going in there!” she screamed at both of them.  She was tired of this debate.

Cyrus became even more agitated when Michelle spoke.  It was clear that he was trying to process everything he was seeing.

Then Caleb made his final move.  He pointed to his empty mouth, and then pointed to the angel’s mouth.  Point, set, match.  That was enough for Cyrus to shake off any doubts and comply with the order given to him.

Cyrus grabbed Michelle’s arm and pulled her to the edge.  He nodded to Caleb and Caleb ran like a cheetah back to the castle.  The Realm of Thorns it was then.

The realm was for liars, and there were certainly a lot of them.  It was at maximum capacity and everyone was wearing either expensive suits or ugly off the rack suits. Government officials, CEOs, and run of the mill thieves and liars were the main professions that populated the realm.

There were endless tangles of thick branches and bushes that filled the entire realm.  They, of course, were covered in thorns.  Not the kind of thorns found on rose bushes, which might be have been tolerable, but large thorns that were sharper than glass, thicker than a wrist, and everywhere.  There was no safe haven to be found.  If you tried to stop moving, the thorns would move against you as if they were alive.  The branches were constantly changing and growing new thorns.  They would spear up from the ground where there had been a clear space and would continue growing and tangling with the other branches.  For every lie someone had told, a new thorn would slice their skin until they understood the pain that their lies caused others.

Standing at the edge of the realm, her mind chose that moment to blind her with the worst migraine of her life, worse than the one that had landed her in Lucifer’s lap.  It look her a second to regain her balance and see clearly.  She nearly vomited on Cyrus.

Before she could recover completely, a hand slammed against her back and she fell unceremoniously into the thorns.  As she fell into the middle of the realm, she quickly realized that it wasn’t going to be easy to escape.  A man who had lied to everyone, including his own grandmother, pushed passed her and knocked her straight into a wall of thorns.  The migraine was forgotten when pain tore through her back and radiated through every part of her body.  Anguish was the only thought left in her head.

∞

Michelle opened her eyes when she felt something hit her.  She looked up and saw that the branches she had started to number to pass the endless days were gone and she was being hit with only one thing.  Granted that one thing stung terribly, but it was only one thing, not hundreds.  An angel was standing over her hitting her with a cat-o-nine-tails made of barbed wire.  The Realm of Thrashing Vines it was then, home of the backstabbers.  At least she was moving on to something else.  She vaguely recalled crawling her way to the edge of the thorn branches and being pulled along the pathways between realms before having her face smashed into the ground.  She must have been transferred.

If she ever saw Caleb again, she would do worse to him than remove his tongue.  She mentally listed all the parts she would remove and how she would remove them as the whip came down again.

Her headache had quieted to a dull ache in the back of her skull when a woman who had reached the edge was thrown back in by one of the angels and landed directly on her. The woman had turned on every person in her life and tried to destroy anyone who was nice to her.  She was a real winner.  All things considered, she’d rather have people thrown at her than be whipped with barbed wire.  Maybe she’d just invented a new torture.  Her sarcasm died away when the metal came down again and tore through her stupid dress and her skin.

∞

Time had lost all meaning.  She had endured the Realm of Claws where she had been mauled by animals with razor sharp claws; the Realm of Ghouls with its monstrous creatures tearing the flesh from her body and breaking her bones; the Realm of Burning Seas where she was boiled alive, while being drowned; the Realm of Frost where her body slowly froze, until pieces of her fell off; and yes, her favorite, the Realm of Fire where she had been burned alive. She wasn’t sure why she had ended up in Murderer’s Row, or some of the harsher realms, but no one questioned whether she should be there.  She was simply tossed in time and again.  She was even thrown into the lesser the realms like the Realm of Thirst, and the Realm of Insects.  The only realm she skipped was the one for rapists, the Realm of Monsters.  That one was just too gruesome for words.

The only thing that kept her from losing her mind completely was Lucifer.  She thought about how he had kissed her and how soft his lips had been.  She remembered how his hands had roamed her body.  She pictured how beautiful he was when he watched her mouth slide over him.  She wanted to feel him against her again.  Next time she would remove his shirt and see all of him.  She laughed as she remembered her embarrassment in the Throne Room when he told her to put on the dress.  Part of her wished she had taken her clothes off in front of him.  She should have been terrified of him or at least angry with him for sending her off to her doom, but stupidly she still wanted him.

She hadn’t seen Lucifer since he ran out her room.  She wondered why he wasn’t standing around laughing at her pain.  Since Caleb worked for Lucifer, she assumed Lucifer had ordered that she be put through the gamut.  Apparently, she would indeed be punished for taking her own life.  She suddenly understood why Lucifer had said that she was special.  Not only would she live out her afterlife as a prisoner of Hell and be tortured, but she would also have to please Lucifer.

She was drowning in the Realm of Drowning Seas when a hand pulled her out.  She looked up to see a man standing in front of her smiling cheerfully.  It took her a while to stop coughing up water.  Once she was able to breathe again, she looked up, and saw that Hades had rescued her.

“Tired of this yet, kitten…err…Mistress?” He smiled pleasantly and held out his hand to her.

“Yes! Get me out of here!” she yelled as she reached out and clung to him.

“Your wish is my command.  I would have brought you a towel had I known you were here.  I thought you were still in the Realm of Fire,” he smirked and handed her a bag of marshmallows.

She instantly disliked Hades.

He turned to walk away while beckoning her to follow.  She got to her feet, without his help, and was led into the castle.  When she approached the guard at the doors, she saw that she was whole again, her injuries completely healed, though her dress was still in shreds.  She was soaking wet, but at least she could breathe again.

They entered the castle, walked up four flights of stairs to the rotunda and took the hallway on the right to Lucifer’s tower.  Crossing the covered bridge, she looked out over the realms at all the souls being tortured.  She was grateful to no longer be one of them.  They passed under the fire lit chandeliers, through the enormous black metal doors, and into the Throne Room. Hades ascended the dais and seated himself on Lucifer’s throne. 

S
nug as a bug in a rug
, Michelle thought as she watched Hades settle in.

It irked her to see him sitting there instead of Lucifer. Not that she was loyal at all to Lucifer; it just seemed to be an insult.  She had a feeling that one of the lower thrones was probably his.  Maybe he still had more of a god complex than Lucifer had let on; either that or he liked the exercise from walking up the extra step to the better throne.  He looked out of place in his sharp suit, sitting on the Skull Throne.  She focused on the largest skull at the top of the chair, the one with ruby eyes.  For some reason it made her think of Lucifer.  She was surprised to find that she missed him.

“Now, isn’t this more comfortable?” Hades looked down at Michelle from atop the dais.

She was convinced he suffered from delusions of grandeur.

“It’s better than swallowing a ton of water, sure,” she sneered and wrung out her hair.

Mental note, throw Hades into the Realm of Frost, watch his fingers fall off
, and
then offer him a Popsicle
, she thought, grinding her teeth together.

“Yes, well, what do you expect from Hell?  Speaking of which, let’s make you a little more presentable, shall we?” Hades waved his hand toward Michelle’s dress.

She was instantly dry and no longer in tatters like a shipwrecked sailor.  She was also warm for the first time since being on fire.