Page 50 of Fear No Hell

Calliope

When I wake up, I’m warm, two arms secured tightly around me and a chest rumbling on a slight snore beneath my chest. Still fuzzy and not wholly alert, I squint one eye open enough to see around me without actually waking up.

I’m curled on my side on Sam’s naked chest, my head nestled under his chin.

One of his hands is tucked around my back, the other is securely cupped under one of my ass cheeks.

It’s what a bridal carry would look like if both parties were asleep when it was happening.

I snicker silently before caving and opening both eyes as I try to piece together the fragments of whatever happened earlier that led to Sam holding me like this in my sleep.

The sounds of the house filter into my consciousness as I puzzle everything together.

The argument.

The air conditioner cranks to life with a clank overhead.

Me offering to leave.

A lawn mower roars outside.

Sam begging me to stay.

Under my cheek, Sam’s heartbeat thuds.

Realizing how much I love him.

I let out a choked sound. I can’t leave because I love Sam, and he…

well, he loves me more than I deserve. All of me, every vindictive facet.

He doesn’t think the darkness that’s been haunting me for the last half a year is a dealbreaker.

In fact… he seems to think it’s something to be celebrated.

Not an absence of good or an abundance of evil, merely the absence of light.

Beautiful things can grow and thrive in darkness.

Flowers that bloom only under the light of the moon and close under the bright sun.

Creatures that live in the deepest parts of the ocean.

What if I’m one of the creatures that was made for moonlight and darkness?

Not evil, necessarily, but an honest reflection of the world around us?

And what if Sam is meant to be in the shadows with me?

With several careful wiggles, I slip out of Sam’s arms, almost caving to the urge to stay in his grasp when he grumbles quietly at me, and off the bed.

The floorboards creak as I step away from him, and I freeze.

Sam’s breathing doesn’t change, though, save an unintelligible murmur.

I smile and tiptoe towards the doorway. He’s off tonight, so I want to make sure he gets as much sleep as he can.

I’m halfway across the room when there’s a rustle followed by a, “Lila?”

“Good morning.” I pivot and head back to the bed to brush a gentle kiss across his lips.

“Where you goin’?” he mumbles sleepily. His eyes are heavy-lidded, only a thin line of hazel iris visible as he nestles deeper into the bed’s dark sheets.

“Just making us something to eat.”

“What time 'sit ?”

“Time for all the good ER doctors to be asleep.”

He wrinkles his nose at that, one eye cracking open enough to give me a disgruntled stare.

“Fine, it’s late morning.” I sneak a look at the nightstand clock, where the numbers 2:30 PM blaze in glowing red, and amend. “Mid-afternoon.”

“Can ’elp,” he drawls, his eyelids already closing.

“No, my darling, you go back to sleep.” I drop another kiss on his lips as he dozes back off. “I’ll wake you up once everything’s ready.”

His only response is a half snore that follows me out of the room.

As I gather the eggs and other ingredients for pancakes, I consider what our lives could be once we finish off Arthur.

I’m getting close to feeling like I’m done with him, like I’m ready to let go of my revenge.

I want a life with Sam. One without Arthur as a dark shade over it.

Our lifespans are aggressively different—I’m immortal, and Sam is most definitely not—but I would rather have several wonderful decades with him than nothing at all.

We’ll figure everything out: our shared dreams, his mortality, my transformation, all of it. But we’ll do it together. I breathe out a sigh, knowing what I have to do next.

The pancakes are almost done, the scrambled eggs already plated, when there’s a shuffle of feet behind me.

Sam’s arms wrap around me as he drops his chin into the space between my neck and shoulder that seems custom made for him. “Smells good.”

“It’s just pancakes and eggs,” I chuckle, pressing a kiss to the side of his face.

“I love both of those things.” He squeezes my waist before grabbing the silverware and maple syrup I set out and taking them to the table.

“You say that about everything I make.” I twist the dial to turn off the stove and load up the plates.

“And I mean it about everything you make.”

After rolling my eyes at him over my shoulder, I grab everything and head to join him. Once we’re seated, food set out in front of us and Sam already digging in, I say, “I’m going to summon her.”

Sam squints at me before swallowing a mouthful of pancake and setting down his fork. “I’m gonna need a little more to go on than that if you want me to know what you’re talking about.”

“My mother. I’m going to do it. I’m going to summon her.”

“Okay.”

“It’s time. I need to try this. I can’t let—” The words work their way up my throat before I can stop them. “—The man I love change without knowing what’s happening or why. If that’s even what’s happening. I don’t know. But she may.”

Sam blinks at me. His face is blank of any specific, discernible expression; his eyebrows, raised almost to his hairline, tell a different story. “I’m sorry—” He coughs. Starts again. “What did you just say.”

It’s not a question.

“I said I’m going to summon my mother.”

“I-uh-I heard that part, and I’m definitely interested in how we’re going to do that since people don't usually 'summon' people to get ahold of them.” Sam purses his lips thoughtfully. “But you said something else I want to unpack.”

“That she may be able to help?” This caginess—and I’m not wholly certain why I’m even doing it—is starting to feel playful rather than like me dodging his questions.

Especially when he’s already up out of his seat and lifting me onto the kitchen table next to my untouched plate, his eyes glinting as my legs fall open to spread around his hips.

“Nope, nope, not that. Try again.”

“Oh, the part about the man I love?”

His eyes go completely black, one of the first times I’ve seen it happen outside of a dream and haven’t thought it was a trick of light, but it doesn’t signify, not when he’s growling, an aggressive sound that has me wet in seconds, and his hands are tight around my thighs.

“Yeah. That fucking part.” He blinks, and his normal hazel irises and white sclera are back.

“You need me to spell it out for you?”

“Yep.” The ‘p’ is a hard pop, a vibration against my lips.

“If I must—”

“You really must, sweetness.”

I cradle his face in my hands, the feeling so familiar to me it steals my breath. “I love you, Sam. I love you so—”

He steals the rest of my words when he crushes his mouth to mine, nipping at my lower lip until I open for him, his tongue sliding along mine with ease.

He feeds me little groans, and I return them with hungry noises of my own as he turns me inside out with just his tongue.

By the time he pulls away, I’m gasping, so aroused I can’t see straight.

“I love you, Lila,” he purrs with a delicate kiss completely at odds with the ravenous way he ate my mouth seconds ago.

“I’m never going to make you regret choosing me.

” One hand leaves my thigh and comes to push at the center of my chest gently, dropping me to my back against the textured wood of the table.

I crane my head up to watch as he rips off my leggings and panties in one fell swoop and tosses them away.

Like loving him is ever a choice I could regret.

I can’t tell him that, though, because all of the air in the room vanishes as he kneels between my legs, his back straight as he drapes my thighs over his shoulders.

“Sam, the floor,” I gasp out, almost losing the thought when his long fingers slide up my thigh towards where I’m already dripping for him.

“What about it?” His fingers slide over my clit, flick it gently.

“Oh gods.” Trying to chase the thought down while he’s touching me, stroking along my body in a confident way that tells me he knows he owns my heart and soul, is impossible. “It's bad—”

“Oh?”

“Leg,” I crow out the final word in the sentence victoriously, despite knowing I managed to get out less than half of the thought. “Uncomfortable.”

“Let’s be real, sweetness.” One of his long fingers slides inside of me; a keening wail rips out of me in response as I roll my hips. Deeper. Gods, I need him deeper. “I couldn’t give less of a fuck how uncomfortable kneeling on the damn floor is.”

A second finger joins the first, pumping quickly, and my thoughts scatter to the wind when his tongue and teeth join the fray.

“Jesus, Lila, you always taste so goddamn good.” His words are barely formed, muffled by where he’s deep in my pussy. He eats me like he’s starving, like he’ll die if he doesn’t taste everything I have to give him. “So fucking good.”

His fingers pump in and out of me. His teeth graze my clit.

“Good boy.” The words form without thought, slip past my lips as I press my palms to the back of his head, grinding against his face, chasing the agonizing pleasure racing down my spine. “Such a sweet pet. Just wanting to give me what you know I need.”

There’s a whimper from between my legs.

“You know what I like, pet.” I tighten my fingers in his hair. “So give it to me. I’m not letting you up for air until you do.”

He’s shaking with need when he thrusts his fingers into me, licks his stiffened tongue over me, nips gently with his teeth, until I can’t breathe, until the world vanishes around me, and I’m screaming his name over and over again, so loud I go hoarse, and come on his face, legs shaking around his ears.

As I come down from the high, I drag Sam to his feet by his hair, barely able to wait patiently for him to stabilize enough to stand.

He’s hard, so gloriously hard, as he looms between my legs.

“Pull down your pants, my love,” I order.

He shoves them down one-handed, the other gripping my thigh. His hard cock springs free and slaps against his lower stomach. A pearly drop of pre-cum sits on the head, sliding down slowly as my eyes follow it hungrily.

“Now—” I rip my crop top over my head and dump it… somewhere. “I need you to come on me.”

A groan rips out of him as he hurries to obey, his hand dropping to his cock. He’s shaking after one stroke. Swearing after two. Babbling after three. Silently crying after four.

“Do you want to come, pet?”

“Yes, please.”

“Then do it.” Circling a hand under each breast, I mound them together. “Come all over me.”

His eyes never once leaving my chest, he pumps hard, his hand a blur along his length.

His groans turn into moans, transform into sobs, and then, with a roared, “Fuck, Lila, I love you so goddamn much,” that shakes the dishes on the table around us, he erupts.

His cum paints my stomach, my tits, every part of me.

Not a centimeter of my torso is spared from him, and the pure abandonment on his beautiful face—the one still wet from my own release—and the hot seed landing all over me send me spiraling into a second climax.

“Pet.”

“Yeah.”

“Feed me the cum you just pumped all over me.” I need to taste him, experience the salty sweetness that gives me life. Makes me feel whole.

His hand trembling, he slicks seed over his fingers and feeds it to me.

My magic rises in response to his taste, spirals through me and pours into every crevice of my body. “Again,” I demand.

Over and over again, he feeds me his release from his fingers until my chest is sticky but clean. The room echoes with the remnants of the erotic noises we filled it with earlier. The food has long since gone cold. I don’t know what time it is, and what’s more, I don’t care.

All that matters is me and Sam.

“Once I can feel my body enough to move, we’re gonna go take a shower,” he rasps. “You good if we use yours rather than me trying to get us up the stairs? Feel like stairs after that is a recipe for disaster.”

“Umhmm,” I hum in agreement. “And while we’re at it, you should probably move all of your stuff into my bedroom.”

His gaze goes serious. “What—”

“Sam, I meant what I said. I love you.” A blissful smile takes over his face at my words. “And I want you with me wherever I am. Which means you’re not sleeping upstairs anymore.”

“Are you sure?”

“More than I’ve ever been about anything. I want you with me. I need you with me.” I go quiet. “Do you want that?”

“Fuck yes!” Apparently able to move once more, he drags me into his arms, burying his nose in my hair. “Yes, Lila, I want to go to sleep with you and wake up with you. For as long as you’ll let me, I want that.”

“Pretty sure that’s forever then.” His face goes slack as, for the second time today, tears glaze his eyes. “But now I’m a sticky mess. It’s time for you to get me clean.”

With that gorgeous smile still on his face, he escorts me to the shower, his arms secure around me as he settles me onto the bench situated under the showerhead.

He doesn’t ask me once why we haven’t had penetrative sex.

He doesn’t pressure me. Instead he cleans me so carefully, his talented hands wiping away more than the sticky remains of his cum.

Each swipe erases the feel of one of Arthur’s many unwanted touches.

The pass of Sam’s thumb over my breast purges Arthur’s teeth clamping around and tearing at my nipple.

The stroke of his palm over my stomach eases the pressure where the mattress hit while Arthur rutted me from behind.

His hands working shampoo through my hair and massaging it out with the water from the rainfall showerhead tear Arthur’s grasping fingers from my hair.

And the press of his forehead against mine, the way he whispers that he loves me against my lips? That tears away every hateful word Arthur spit at me all those years.

Sam is my home.

All that’s keeping me from letting him inside me in every way are answers to what I’m becoming.

I’m going to take what he has saved for me.

Seated next to him on the bench, water pouring around us, I kiss him gently.

Soon. The second we know what’s happening, I want everything he has to give me, and I’ll give him everything I have in return.