Page 607 of Rage

“Yes. Fuck,”he gasped.

His hips slammed into haunches as he curled over top of me, laying me face down in the old cushions as he fucked me into them. The tightening angle seemed to push him over the edge as he let out a snarl.

He slowed his thrusts, milking his cock into me. I felt the hot liquid fill me before it ran out of space and slipped out past the tight fit of him inside of me. His breathing slowed, he sounded like a powerful beast that had just led a stampede.

He laid next to me and I let a moan out into the cushions as every ridge and bump of his cock brushed on the over-sensitive surfaces of me. I rolled onto my side, my legs and body achy from the first and likely hardest fuck of my life.

He pulled me into his chest and started brushing his fingers through my hair, his hands painfully gentle. I tilted my chin up to look at him, but something…caught. Something painful.

A chuckle rumbled in his chest as he lifted his chin. “They will take some getting used to,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what he meant at first, then he grasped the tip of my chin and adjusted the angle of it so I could look up at him. When I did, I found he was down to only one set of horns: the larger set. Earlier I’d grown fangs where he lost two of his, so that could only mean…

I reached up to the spot on my forehead where I’d been feeling discomfort while he’d been fucking me, feeling a bulge and swell of bone before it extended up another four inches and tapered to a razor sharp point.

“Horns,” I said.

He brushed a hand down my back. “Everything has been returned to you, my love,” he said, leaning forward and kissing my forehead. I wondered if he’d done some magic, because the soreness abated after that simple show of affection.

“But we were just human,” I said softly.

He didn’t falter, picking up on the conversation we’d been having before he finished. “We had been once, yes,” he said. “Servants of Atreya. Not priestesses, like the other one. But we followed her teachings. The missionaries came with their books and their rules and before long they had one half of the village turned against the other.”

I closed my eyes, remembering the smell of blood and ash, remembering crying as I smeared soot that had collected on my own burnt limbs over his face. I’d wanted to memorize the feeling of it. The feeling of him. The feeling of love. Knowing that I was dying and that there was nothing I could do about it.

A single tear escaped my eye as this memory went hand in hand with the utter devastation of losing Penny. There was almost too much loss. A much smaller thumb brushed the tear away and I opened my eyes to see Rowan almost nose-to-nose with me. Roughly man-sized rather than the towering creature of before.

“You’re smaller.” I sniffed.

“You willed me to be,” he said softly. “Before you needed me to be larger; stronger. You craved protection. Now you only need me to hold you as a man holds a wife; as an equal.”

“Where did I go?” I asked. “Why did this all have to happen?”

He smiled knowingly at me, brushing tears away. “You were so tired,” he said. “After doling out retribution again and again and again, seeing the darkness in men’s hearts again, and again, and again. You are so vicious when angry, but inside of you is still this gentle, tender heart.”

He placed his hand over the spot where my heart should be, but it was still.

“Do you feel rested now, Briar, Queen of Thorns?” he asked.

Queen of Thorns? Wasn’t that some Atreyan minor goddess?

I placed my hand over his heart and felt two different heartbeats. He put his free hand over mine. “You gave me thisfor safe keeping,” he said softly. “But you can have it back whenever you like. For the task ahead, it may be better not to have it.”

Outside of the room a chorus of anguished screams and demented laughter rose and echoed against the walls.

I smelled the blood and bile, a stench that had become as well known to me as my favorite perfume.

“It sounds like they have already handled it,” I said.

“It sounds like these arrogant fools have provided you with your very first priestesses,” he said, his grin going wicked. “And that you need to teach them the best way to make use of those knives and just whose flesh it should rend.”

“There are so many men like them.” I sighed. “Our work will never be done.”

“Fear can do so much to inspire good behavior, my love,” he said.

I met eyes with him for a moment before struggling to sit upright. He braced his hand on my back to help me. I held my hand out in front of me, examining the brutal claws at the tips of my fingers, then looked with awe at the wavy hair falling well past my hips and pooling in black puddles around my body.

I was still me. But I was alsoher: She who grew tired and chose to be forgotten. And the creature beside me had waited so very long for my return. I wasn’t sure if it was love that I felt for him, but I knew I felt gratitude and loyalty. Loyalty both to him and to the women destroying the men out in that ritual chamber.

“We need to get dressed,” I said. “And we need to get started.”

He cradled my hand in his and kissed the back of it.

“Of course, my love,” he said obediently. “Let us rid the world of this scourge.”

As the cries of dying men quieted to blissful silence and the drifting silk of fine garments enrobing my skin, I leaned in to kiss him before responding, “Sounds like fun.”

The End.

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