Vicki Pettersson - The Given

Placing her palms on the bed, one on each side of his head, Kit rose atop him and stroked his sides with her calves, her thighs, caressing him as she pressed into his groin. Grif thrust his pelvis upward, attempting to flip, but she palmed his hip and eased him back down.

This was hers, she thought, eyes narrowing. Not Evelyn Shaw’s or anyone else’s. This man in this time and place was hers alone. And this, she thought, throwing back her head, was living.

Slowly, deliberately, Kit settled, Grif palming her hips as she began to glide. Rhythmically, he pushed with the heel of his palms and pulled again with his fingertips, but ultimately he allowed her to set the pace. He tilted upward beneath her, increasing the pressure of him inside of her, a movement that made her moan and slide more insistently. She had a need for him to brand her there, a tattoo on the inside, a craftsman leaving his mark. She wanted to feel him deep within her even after he was no longer there.

Grif bent his knees and Kit leaned back against them, curling her legs tightly beneath and around him. Every moment that passed and that they remained joined was a chance to slip further away from the confines of time and space, leaving behind who they were alone. It would all still be waiting for them when they returned. Even now Kit could feel the force of time pressing its oiled fingertips against the windowpanes.

For now they disappeared together in this bedroom, in these walls, fused together by long-banked desire, and stoked by the greed they felt for each other’s flesh. Tongue and breasts and lips and cock all melded into pure sensation.

“No matter what,” Grif rasped, devouring her neck, “I’ll never forget this.”

His words were the first thing, and the only, to give her pause, but then he raised her up and found her breast with his mouth. So, arched forward, Kit swore the same silent vow. She hoped the heavens were listening. She hoped they watched. This was love, and it could not be confined to lifetimes or breaths. The soul was eternal, and the simple eternal truth was that Grif’s place inside of Kit’s body and mind—inside of her life —was, very simply, the truest thing she’d ever known.

Kit wasn’t sure what woke her, and for a moment she couldn’t even care. She was in her favorite spot in the world, head burrowed into the dip of Grif’s left shoulder, his arm draped over her naked back like a protective shield. Their legs were entwined, heavy with heat, and her inner thighs were satisfyingly sore. She wished she could stay here forever.

Instead she went to the bathroom to fill her now-empty tumbler with water, and leaned over the basin to touch her head to the mirror, letting the cold water run over her wrists. The chill shocked the sleep from her, but that was what she wanted. Grif was back in her bed. She could sleep when she was dead.

Yet for some reason tears began to well. She should be happy. She and Grif were together, he’d lived again in her body, but something was wrong. There’d been desperation to their lovemaking, a longing to his touch even though she was right there, and it felt too much like he expected her to disappear.

And, of course, he had sat in the corner of her living room, intending to say good-bye.

Don’t worry about that now, she told herself again. He’d had his reasons, and even might try to do so again, but if she were to think about that, to anticipate his absence, she’d miss his very presence.

Living in the future like that, Kit thought, putting the water glass to her lips, was just as bad as living ever in the past.

She caught her reflection at the exact moment that she took a sip. Stiffening, she gasped, and the glass shattered on the marble countertop, yet she didn’t look away. Her image was an opaque outline at best, the mirror steamed like when she took a too-hot shower, yet obscured and glowing with gray-blue pearlescent fog. It roiled on the other side, trapped there like a silent storm, but then thinned enough to reveal another head exactly where her own reflection was supposed to be.

Kit did not scream or growl or rant; she recognized that unworldly, churning gaze.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked Sarge.

“Technically? You’re sleepwalking,” Sarge answered, his features growing sharper, forming like clay, then hardening like he was standing in a kiln. He waited for her to finish studying him, and Kit took her time.

He looked nothing like what she expected. Grif had described him as being large and dark and intimidating, and while this being did have the wings of a Pure, the soaring arches were bald in spots, black feathers clinging to sinew as if for dear life. He had long troughs carved from his eyes to nose, and again to his mouth, and they slipped down his jaw and disappeared beneath his chin. His skin was ashy—though it could just be the mist—and the outline of his collarbones protruded in slashes from beneath the white robe. Though clearly otherworldly, he looked beaten down and diminished, at least to her untutored gaze.

“And what are you doing?” she asked him, because she knew the Pure hated visiting the Surface in any form.

“Something even God Himself would find shocking,” he admitted. He inclined his head. “I am apologizing.”

Kit was shocked, too, but she didn’t ask what he was apologizing for. A better question would’ve been where he intended to start. This being had manipulated her with almost cruel indifference. Nicole had said that Sarge knew Kit had suffered, but he couldn’t possibly know the extent of it . . . or the fear that his appearance in her home, coinciding with that of Grif in her bed, struck through her now.

She wouldn’t say it though, she thought, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall. She wouldn’t give him any more ammunition to use against her.

“I harmed you. I didn’t mean to,” he said, then stopped himself with a slow shake of his head. “No, that’s not right. I didn’t even care that I was harming you, because I knew that what I was doing was right. God’s will was, and remains, for Griffin Shaw to heal enough to move safely into His presence, forever wrapped in His glory and light.”

“Yeah, I wish those things for Grif as well.” She narrowed her eyes and had to force her jaw to unclench. “But I would have gone about it differently.”

“I thought you were what was keeping him from returning to the Everlast,” the angel explained, his ruined face moving in strange directions, stretching so that he grimaced in pain. “I was wrong and I was punished for it.”

“How?”

“I was forced to feel every pang in your heart. Every tear that you shed. Every emotion normally denied a Pure. I know your sorrow, Katherine Craig.”

Good. The thought came before Kit could stop it.

“I felt that, too.” A corner of Sarge’s mouth lifted wryly, and Kit felt shamed, but Sarge held up a hand in the mirror. His overly long fingers were white-tipped where they pressed against the glass. Leaving them there, he looked at her, and after another moment, Kit placed her hand against the glass so that they were palm-to-palm.

“You gave me new knowledge. You made me see that mankind’s love for one another is the same as your love for Him. That no matter what form it takes, love is the very essence of God. It is what makes you so very like Him.”

He heaved a sigh, then dropped his head and hand. Kit’s fingertips tingled where they’d been touching the glass, and she pulled away, holding it with the other, close to her chest.

“I didn’t know that before, not in any way that mattered.” He shook his head, and Kit winced at the sound of cutting glass. “Outside of worshipping God, I could not fathom any sort of emotion that could make you aware of both everything and nothing at the same time.”