Lord, I can’t seem to stop posting!!
Most of my work is short fiction and, again, I’ll post the oldest first. Start at the beginning, proceed to the middle, conclude with the end sort of arrangement, you understand.
So, without further blathering, here’s one.
Summary: Lost in the dark underworld of dreams, a young woman discovers herself face to face with a tall problem she never expected.
Rating: PG-13 for Adult Situations and Religious Contexts
Word Count: 2,954
Status: More or less complete. With the proper attention it could go further.
Started: 2003
Edits: 1
Series: N/A
Read the pdf. or just scroll down.
Black Roses
Black Roses
Black roses. Their petals fall from the air like ravens’ feathers and coat the ground in layer after layer of fragrant velvet. The bare, spindly arms of the trees reach for warmth from them but those silky-soft patches of shadow slip like ink through paper from their branches. I lift my face toward the sky, overcast and ominous, the faint rumble of thunder heralding the coming storm. Over me, beside me, beneath me, all around me they fall but the hallowed ground which is my skin is never touched. A fitful wind makes them dance wildly for a moment and my unrestrained hair whips about as if trying to capture the fleeing buds. The ashen tendrils settle, disappointed, splaying sulkily over my back and shoulders. I reach a slender hand to brush it from my face, my fingertips lingering thoughtfully against the curve of my cheekbone. The faintly delicious scrape of my long nails over my skin sends a shiver down my spine and hardens my nipples, bare beneath the transparent archaic night shift I wore. I let my lids slip down over my eyes and draw the roses’ unique scent deep into my lungs.
Black roses are a thousand times more dangerous than any common rose. Their scent is the sweetest, richest, most musky of all roses but there is a sharper tint, like the bite of salt in a wound, and a bitter aftertaste, not unlike the pungent tang of the opium poppy, that remains long after the scent has dispersed. They grow in wild, unruly forests of thick black thorns longer than a yard and as big around as a man’s arm. The bark is slick and poisonous so that once it has pierced the flesh, even the smallest scratch, a long suffering death is soon to follow. The scent intoxicates you, drives you mad. It is an aphrodisiac and a poison. It is the smell of burning flesh, carrion, and hate. The smell of freshly made love, of a newborn child, and hope. It fills you up yet leaves you aching, desperate for more. It is everything and nothing.
A sound penetrates the silence of falling petals and my eyes open slowly. There is a new shade, a darker shadow leaning against the slick, dark bark of one of the barren, naked trees. Beyond this, I glimpse the sky, nearly black now, the storm almost furiously upon us, this shadow and I. The wind has picked up and now whistles panickedly through the branches and thorn forest. My head cocks to the side like a little bird’s as my eyes trace the silhouette beside trunk. I take a step forward, and without glancing down, I know that those pitch-black blossoms evade my touch, leaving icy, stark earth to greet my unblemished soles. A chill races up from my feet and goosebumps prickle my skin. I take another step and then another.
With every step the wind blows harder and the snap and crack of limbs fill the air, along with patches of stained flora. The figure never moves but the errant gale has caught their overcoat in its grasp, sending it belling out like the spread wing of a great bird swooping down to capture its unsuspecting prey. Now I am surrounded by the rotting skeletons and I stop beside one, my hand pressing into the moist, slimy bark, leaving an imprint in the mold. My hair has become a maelstrom ‘round my face and I seek to tame it. Imprisoning the majority of it, I use my free hand to press it against the side of my neck but my eyes remain trained on the figure, a man, lounging no more than a few yards from me. A cowl covers the upper half of his face from my view but I can feel his gaze boring into me, seeming to scorch my skin with an arctic blaze. His mouth, chin and the lower line of his nose is all I see. He is tall, standing at a height that would dwarf most adult males. He is dressed in the colors of the storm and his clothes are elegant and expensively cut, displaying a body that is lean, yet undeniably powerful, to its most devastating advantage. I feel uneasy suddenly where before I had felt nothing but interested indifference. I glance over my shoulder but the scenery hasn’t changed with the darkening sky.
The austere hilltop is the color of ashes and coal dust, ringed by a forest of malicious, greedy thorns from which grow the crooked, gangrenous trees like poisonous spikes. My footsteps have been swept beneath a rug of gloom and doom and there is nothing to do but to look forward at the man. A frown creases the corners of my mouth downward and I narrow my eyes suspiciously. The air has chilled and the wind has changed direction, now slamming against my back insistently, urging me onward. I stumble forward, reluctantly. I lean back into the wind and struggle to keep my grip on the tree, digging my nails and my fingers deep into the mold and the decaying wood. Fear rolls in the depths of my belly and I jump as lightening flashes directly above my head. The smell of burnt ozone fills my nostrils and I struggle to breathe past it. My grip loosens and the wind tears me from my not-so-safe harbor with a satisfied snarl. A small scream escaping me, I am hurled the last short distance by the rollicking wind and tossed by thorn and bramble at the feet of the dreadfully patient stranger.
The rain has come and it sends the briars and branches to cackling and it drowns out the soulful cry of the gale in the clouds. It is a steady pounding, drenching me to the bone. My shift clings to my naked body beneath, outlining detail after detail, leaving me no dignity, no modesty. My skin is coated in slick black as the fallen petals no longer shrug away from me. Rain and roses fall and I refuse to look any higher than the ever-dampening earth oozing between my pale fingers, clenching them tighter and tighter as if the sterile soil will save me from him and his soul-stealing eyes.
A shift in the wind warns an instant before his shadow falls over me. My muscles go rigid with tension and cold, I fight my instinctive urge to scramble away as fast as the oily ground will let me. It is not only fear and ice that stiffen my body but pride. My hair clings, panicked, to my neck and the one shoulder that my stumble has revealed. I want to squeeze my eyes shut but they won’t close. My breath rattles in my throat and my chest rises and falls raggedly. Icy drops of water tremble as they fall from my lashes. I feel him move and then the blazing shock of his thumb and finger grasping my trembling chin. His touch is like an inferno radiating through my body with just that one small point of contact. I will not look upon his face. I refuse. He lifts my face up toward his own. I can barely control the shaking in my limbs.
“Look at me,” he murmurs. His is a voice meant for seduction. A rich, velvety baritone with the smallest most delicate trace of an accent, it rolls over the listener like hot fudge over vanilla ice cream. My lashes shield my eyes as they stare at the ridiculous beauty of his muscled calves and long shapely feet. His slacks are a fine grey silk that drapes just-so over the contours of his distinctive musculature, defining yet hiding its beauty. He is wearing soft black leather boots, I think, but can’t be sure because the light is too dim and my eyes are having trouble focusing. His weight shifts and he bends a knee. Crouching, one long elegant hand, like concert violinist’s, rests casually on that knee and he repeats his request, an air of command sliding behind the words. I shake my head, once, in denial. I study the signet ring that looks to have worn itself a groove in the flesh of his left pinkie. It’s simple. The band and setting is a thick silver whose surface seems to have been etched with a message once but is now faded by time. The stone is black and transparent and unlike any stone I have ever seen. It shown brilliantly although there is no light to speak of; the light appears to come from within the stone or, perhaps, the man himself. My eyes desperately try to focus on the ring but his touch is insistent.
“What a proud one you are,” he says, admiration and irritation warring in his tone as he leisurely strokes my chin and bottom lip with the pad of his index finger. A shudder dances down my spine and my lashes flutter as he moves to cup my entire jaw in his palm. He uses his thumb to thrum the leaping pulse below my ear and I find I’m having the damnedest time concentrating on not looking at him. I silently curse my over-developed sense of aesthetics because I know when I look into his face I will see the most excruciatingly beautiful face of all time staring back at me. That beauty was temptation enough without the luscious promise of something else dripping like nectar from his words. He lifts my entire face toward his, so that now, instead of his knees and hands, I’m looking at the strong, shadowed column of his throat and the chiseled perfection of his mouth and beard-shadowed jaw. Damn, his beauty, I snarl to myself through the fear the clogs my rational processes.
“Such a striking little thing, too,” he murmurs near my ear. Liar, I think, trickster, cheat; I call him filthy names in my head as he bends his head down so close to mine his lips brush the sensitive shell and his sweet breath tickles the hair at my temple. I draw a quick breath in reaction and nearly choke as his scent swirls through my dazed mind, numbing even the silent curses that had helped me balance. A knowing chuckle rumbles in his broad chest no more than a few scants inches from my nose. Abruptly, I get the sense that I’ve been horribly outmaneuvered. I stiffen and try to lean away from him but his iron grip on my head prevents my body from moving more than an inch or so in any direction.
“Stubborn and willful as well, I see,” he chuckles again and fondly strokes the line of my jaw with a finger. “I should’ve known it from this strong chin and that delightfully sulky bottom lip,” he says, his voice deepening on the last, becoming disturbingly thick and sleepy. His finger teases that bottom lip unmercifully before reclaiming its original place along my cheek and jawbone.
“Pride I knew from the beginning; I saw it in all this silk ,” again, he whispers in my ear, his free hand skimming through the sodden tendrils dangling down my back and over my hindquarters. His hand follows them down my back. At his touch, they are once more dry and smooth, no longer dripping or windblown. He picks out a single lock that lies along the indention of my backbone and he strokes down, down, down until his fingers brush the curve of my buttocks and trace the dimples at the base of my spine through the clinging, moist fabric. He is so close I can barely breathe and his touch makes my body quiver in exquisite agony. I hate myself for finding even the smallest pleasure in the contact of his hands. He smells like a church; expensive incense, the sweet, faintly floral scent of silk vestments, and the sharp lemony smell of freshly polished wood.
“But I never dreamed you’d be this mule-headed,” he says, his mouth below my ear now, his lips a breath away from touching the skin there, his dark hood brushing tenderly across my cheek. I jump as his hand abruptly lifts from my jaw, shifting to encircle the slim column of my throat, his thumb coming to rest in the hollow at its base, starting to apply a steady, disturbing pressure. My hands clench and I can feel my nails biting into the skin of my palms. Sweet Mother, I gasp inwardly, fighting the surge of terror in my veins and the rising tide of desire in the core of my body. Think, damn you, think, I swear at myself, you’ve got to say something to get his mind off seducing you or you’ll end up begging him to throw your shift over your head and have his wicked, wicked way with you. My lashes flutter against my cheekbones and a tiny frown line forms between my brows as I struggle to gather my scattered thoughts. The first thought that pops into my head slips from between my lips and I’m stunned by the audacity of it.
“What do you mean you never dreamed I’d be this mule-headed? I thought you’d have done your homework like a good psychopath before you violated your women.” My voice is breathy and faint, not as strong or as sure as I had hoped. “But then again, I guess I should expect such rash and undisciplined behavior from someone like you.” It is stronger now and my famous tone, cutting and acidic, is just on the edge of the words.
He pauses and I can feel the sudden tension radiating from his big body into mine. I pray I haven’t misjudged my target and bitten off more than I could ever hope to chew. He lifts his head until he can look at my face, if not into my eyes. His grip on my throat has tightened just the smallest bit, just enough to set my pulse to leaping unsteadily beneath his thumb. I can feel the wheeze of air in my throat beneath it, whirring faintly as I inhale. I force my eyes to focus on his inhumanly lovely mouth, struggling not to show my fear or let his power cow me into backing down.
“Explain yourself, my pet,” he murmurs darkly, anger coloring his tone sanguine. That accent has thickened delightfully and I can’t help but melt a little under its power.
“My prince,” I say quietly, “Was it not such bold and impulsive actions that have reduced you to this sad state in a land of death and decay?” My tone is purposely genteel and sweet, a tactic used to sharpen the keen edge of my words.
I can feel the fury pouring off him in great, pounding waves. His breath has quickened and the moist heat of it brushing past my cool cheek sets my skin to prickling. I still refuse to look him in the eye and I can feel his gaze burning as it sweeps over my features.
“My, little one, you are more falcon than dove but you forget a finely placed arrow can kill a falcon, for all its strength and courage, as surely as any dove…What say you to that?” he growls low in his throat. But I can not answer him because his hand is tightening further, pressing against my windpipe, turning the whirring wheeze into a sucking gasping struggle. I have to force myself from reaching for his wrist, to pull it from me and cast it aside, but I manage to restrain myself. I make my lips curve into a wry smile and I say, my voice steady for all its lack of volume, “How can I say anything if you insist on throttling me…”I pause, lifting one pale and faintly bloody hand to lay it over his thundering heart. The heat of him scorches my palm but I try to show no response. “…Lucifer?” I exhale his name, little more than a breath of air. I raise my eyes to his face. Our gazes clash like two enemies on a battlefield. But the battle light dims in his stunning eyes, one black and the other gold, as what I said begins to sink in. Immediately, his grip loosens, becomes caressing again. I suck in as much air as I can, coughing. He stares at me a moment, a very long moment. Then the hand at my hip tightens and abruptly pulls me into his body. But he couldn’t pull my upper body with it. I’d locked the elbow of the hand resting over his heart and I am glaring at him from streaming eyes. He sees my reluctance in my narrowed eyes and heavy breaths. A grin lights his expression; fucking sadist.
“I didn’t think you’d remember me so quickly, my love,” he laughed openly, genuine pleasure filling his remarkable eyes.
“Remember you?” I ask, bewildered, a sense of foreboding settling in my bones at the strange change that came over him when I’d said his name. The heat in his eyes and the familiar way he touches my body warns me that there is more to this than meets the eye. But another emotion eclipses the amusement on his face in the next moment after my question.
Arched black brows draw down over his long slender nose with its flaring nostrils and the shadow cast by the hood he still wears gives him a violent, dangerous aura. But it isn’t violence and pain those intense eyes promise me.
“You might not remember it all now but you do remember,” he says huskily…
