I continue to feel that the web site of a fiction writer should have, well, some fiction on it.

After coming back from Viable Paradise, I had occasion to dig through my (relatively small) pile of older work looking for things to submit.  I pulled this story out and, reading it, decided that it didn’t suck.  I couldn’t figure out where to submit it, though, so I offer it to you here.

This is an erotic short story (2200 words or so) I wrote building off the title, which came to me out of the ether at some point.  It has the distinction of being the first thing I ever wrote and finished for myself rather than a class, the first story I ever submitted anywhere, and the first (and so far only) story of mine to ever be short-listed.  It’s also, oddly enough, heterosexual.

Being erotica, this story is Not Safe For Work.  No trigger warnings, though.

 

 

“She meets an angel”
by Kellan Sparver

She meets an angel at a party, earlier that night. He is in his mid-twenties, good-looking, his short hair bleached and spiked. He is going to be a youth pastor, he says, and he looks the part — clean-shaven, a tight black turtleneck, khakis, and brown suede dress shoes, and underneath his turtleneck (she discovers when she clasps her hands behind his neck, later that night in front of her house), a tiny gold cross on a chain around his neck.

Standing in front of her house, feet on the uneven sidewalk, head so far back she can see the stars, the few stars persistent enough to outshine the lights of the city— she sighs. Her wavy hair catches the light of the bare bulb above the porch. She comes back down to earth, looking him full in the face again, then smiles and pulls the cross out and kisses it — “for good luck,” she whispers. Then kisses her way back up his neck to his mouth by way of his ear, and he rewards her with a soft yelp when her teeth grind gently at the lobe.

She’s had a martini — it only takes one. He was drinking a beer when she first saw him, chatting up an acquaintance by the kitchen table on the other side of the room from the chili pot. She was scraping the dregs — always the best bit, the bit where the burgundy and the capsacin and the ground beef congregated, pain and heaven, bite after bite. She can taste the spice in her mouth and the beer on his lips even now. She finds his hands, soft and gentle, under her black tee-shirt, and they slip over her back and up under her bra.

“You’re radiant,” he said, his words almost cut off when her lips met his again.

“Mmmm,” is all she can say. Breaking off with a gasp, she leads him by the hand up the front steps. “Come in with me?” she asks, already half-knowing the answer, and he nods and smiles. She fumbles with her keys, feeling the adrenaline buzz in her veins mix with the feeling of floating, almost outside herself. “Don’t make it go away,” she whispers.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

At last she finds her key and slides it into the lock, turning, opening the door for him and pulling him up the stairs so fast that when the door slams shut behind them, the bang is muffled by the distance. Her momentum carries them into her room, which looked yawning and dark in the wan yellow light of the single incandescent bulb that burns ceaselessly in the hallway. She — they — she can’t tell the difference — trip on the pile of dirty laundry in front of the door, and they fall down on top of it in a tangle of limbs and jeans and brassieres. She uses her foot to push the door closed, its creaky hinges protesting.  He’s on top of her, laughing a bubbly laugh, as he drinks in the last five seconds. She can feel his heart racing in her own chest. In the sudden darkness she feels for his head and pulls him to her and kisses him, her lips hot on his mouth, her tongue tickling his lips, and still she can feel him laughing. She’s not laughing yet so he slips his hands up under her shirt, where she can’t bat them away, and tickles her armpits, feeling the smooth soft vulnerable skin there and the short stubble of hair, and she suddenly bites down and buries her nose in his neck to keep the giggles from coming up, as they inevitably do. She pushes herself up, propping her back against the foot of the bed, and he reaches down and pulls her shirt over her head, throwing it away on top of all the rest of the dirty laundry.

“You…” she says reprovingly, but he only grins. He reaches for her armpits again, but she grabs his arms, and he lets himself be forced over until she’s kneeling over him, and (her arms occupied) she tickles his stomach with her nose, bent over double like a rag doll, and maybe it’s the sensation or maybe it’s the absurdity, but he giggles, drawing his knees up in convulsive laughter. She pulls his turtleneck up and tickles his bare belly some more, but at some point she loses her grip on his arms, and he pulls her up to his mouth, so that she’s fully on top of him now, and they drink of each other. She reaches down and pulls up his turtleneck, breaking away from his mouth just long enough to get the shirt over his head. He reaches under her arms, and she thinks he’s going for her armpits again, but he slides his hands under the strap of her bra and undoes the clasp in a single sure motion, like he’s done this a hundred times before, and she slips her tongue in between his lips and tastes him, malt and chili and anticipation mingling. She presses her chest to his, and she lets her breasts feel the nice muscle definition she can begin to see with her eyes, now that they’re adjusting to the darkness. His muscles are there, but not bulging — she traces the gentle swell of one pec with her fingers, pinching the nipple gently. His tongue meets hers, pushing it back into her mouth, as he cups her breasts in his hands.

She gasps as his fingers find her nipples, moving them gently, and she lays her head on his shoulder as his ministrations become more urgent.  Her nipples are quite hard when she moves away and slides down him, taking off first his shoes (the brown suede dress shoes, soft and supple), then his socks. (In the dim light she doesn’t notice that he’s wearing one brown and one black sock. If he noticed, he’d smile and call it ‘ecumenicism’.) “Mmm, thank you,” he says, wiggling his unbound feet. She wrinkles her nose at the smell of his toes, tracing the pattern his socks embossed onto the smooth skin of his feet with one finger and giggling. Then she turns around and lays back on him, resting her head on his stomach as she raises her leg above her to take off her own shoes, but she gets caught there for several long moments because his fingers have found her nipples again — just lying there, waiting to be touched! — and she can’t concentrate to undo the knot in the laces. At last he moves one hand down her chest, and she can work the first knot loose and half-shake the shoe off, friction removing her sock in the process, but then his fingers are playing with the waistband of her underwear, and she just pulls the second shoe off without untying it, before she really can’t think. He undoes the button and slips his hand into her jeans, feeling her wetness through the crotch of her panties as he strokes her, his other hand still playing with her nipple, and she loses herself for a while.

She can feel his erection between her shoulder blades, and she takes pity on him. Taking his hand (the one sending pleasure coursing up her spine, whichever one that is), she stands, undoing the zipper and shedding her jeans like a snake its skin, and she hears a rustling sound as she pulls him up with her. There’s a wedge of yellow light running down his body — the door (blasted thing) has come open again, but she doesn’t care. He’s already fumbling at his belt, but she takes his hands, places them on her hips.

“Let me do that,” she says softly, smiling, her eyes shining up at him.  She presses her body close to him, feeling his heat, as she undoes his fly, and his khakis fall around his feet to join her clothing at the foot of the bed. She pulls down his boxers, too, and his penis springs like a tiger from its cage. Her hands study it gently — he’s circumsized, and the skin of his head is very soft. His hands grab her buttocks as she pushes him over onto the bed, over the comforter heaped at the foot of the bed, grinding his erection between them. “Further up,” she says, and he squirms his way to the head of the bed with her on top of him. She grabs a condom from the box on the bedside table and tears it open with her teeth and sits up, rolling it deftly over his penis, before kneeling just enough to slip him inside her. She moans, and she is surprised to hear him answer her an octave down. She thrusts, again and again, and then he pulls her towards him, kissing her, his tongue finding hers. She raises and lowers her hips, moaning softly in the back of her throat with every down-beat. He kisses her lips, her cheek, running his tongue lightly over the rim of her earlobe, then biting down gently as she gasps. She finds his nipple and rubs it in circles, and he clutches at her buttocks.

Then suddenly he twists under her, and he’s on top of her now, thrusting, and (her eyes clenched shut) she hears the rush of wings unfurling and a steady whump, whump as he thrusts into her, and she bites her lip until she tastes metal, and then she feels his lips, then his teeth on her nipple, and she can’t hold it in any more, and she screams as she comes, as he thrusts again, and then he pulls his head away, arching his back, grasping her hips so hard she’ll have bruises there tomorrow, and she feels him come inside of her. Her eyes fly open at the sensation and she sees him, mouth open in a soundless roar, his feathers glowing amber in the light from the door, which now stands fully open, and he lets himself down onto her again gently, kissing her, full and deep.

She doesn’t think, doesn’t move, lost in the kiss for an uncountability of time; just their warmth, his tongue soft on her lips, the union of their bodies comprises the entire world.

Her eyes are open. His eyes look warmly back a her, such a light gray they’re almost white. Her hands find the back of his neck, pulling him to her, and she feels the chain of his cross under her fingers. She closes her eyes, kissing him all the more, until she feels as though she’s about to burst.

At last they stop, and she lets her hands fall to the bed. There are soft, downy white feathers all around her.

She looks up at him, questioning, and he nods and kisses her again, lightly.

“I didn’t realize you… do this,” she says.

“I don’t do it often,” he says, smiling at her through the haze of contentment as he furls his wings and pulls himself out of her, slipping off the condom. Wordlessly, she hands him a wad of Kleenexes, and he wraps the condom in them and hands them back. She absent-mindedly sets them on the bedside table, and she turns back and presses herself to him, reveling in the pure physical sensation of his heat, his skin, their legs tangled like an unwound skein of yarn. She runs her thumb down his jaw line, feeling a day’s worth of stubble, then down his neck to his chest and around to his back, feeling the bulge of the great muscles that move his wings. They ripple subtly when he shifts position, bringing his arm up around her.

“Have you ever… done this before?” she asks, looking down at his chest.

He half-smiles, and his eyes grow distant, like he’s looking for something beyond the horizon. “I have. She was — we were both very young.”

She looks up into the depths of his eyes and asks, “Are you a dream?”

He shakes his head, grinning gently. “No, I’m very real.”

“Then I’ll see you again.” And she falls asleep breathing in his scent, the tang of sweat and sandalwood.

When she wakes, he isn’t there, and the room is bare of feathers. The late-morning sun spills golden through the windowblinds she didn’t bother to close last night. Shaking her head, she gets out of bed and picks up the used condom off the bedside table, dropping it on top of a small heap of soft, downy white feathers in the bottom of the trashcan. Turning back towards she bed, she sees a scrap of paper left on the pillow.

It lists a number she recognizes as a local cell phone number, and it says “Call me” with a little heart, so she does.

 

Copyright © 2012 Kellan Sparver.  All rights reserved.

Cover image copyright © iStockphoto.com/Generistock.  Used with permission.  The image is used for illustrative purposes only.  All people depicted are models, and no endorsement or association is intended or implied.