Page 83 of The Flesh Remembers
The Body is a Monument of Devotion
The world was no longer a world.
It was a whisper of ruin and breath, sighs and silence, bodies and dust.
Once grand and terrible, the church was now only a carcass of worship, its broken walls weeping with the last echoes of the faithful. The sky above had stretched open, peeled back like the lips of a god waiting to be kissed, its mouth dark, endless, watching.
The air was still thick with the perfume of climax and devotion, the remnants of sweat, incense, and somethingdeeper, the scent of souls that had been willingly given, of flesh that had melted into faith.
And in the quiet aftermath, only Eleanor and James remained.
They had not all died.
Some had been left behind, frozen in the throes of eternal ecstasy.
A woman lay sprawled at the foot of the ruined altar, her lips still parted, her hands still gripping at something unseen, something lost, her body locked in the moment of her final surrender. Her back arched with each breath, as though she were still offering herself, even now, to a god who no longer needed her.
A man knelt near the shattered stained glass, his arms wrapped around his own trembling body, rocking back and forth as he whispered words no human tongue had ever known. His skin was covered in sigils, written not in ink but in pleasure, pain, and rapture.
They had given themselves freely. And the ritual had kept them. Not dead but not quite alive. Just there on their knees, worshipping forever.
James stood before her, his form no longer shifting or uncertain. He was perfect now. But perfection was a terrible thing. His body still burned with the glow of something beyond mortal understanding, and his eyes still held shadows that whispered and beckoned. But beneath it all, there was hunger. Not the hunger of a man, not even the hunger of a god. The hunger of something eternal, something that had devoured existence itself and still wanted more.
And Eleanor stepped toward him anyway.
Her touch sent tremors through him. His breath faltered like a house on fragile foundations, his hands gripping her waist as if she were smoke slipping through his fingers.
“Eleanor,” he whispered, and her name in his mouth made the world shudder.
She traced her fingers over his jaw, throat, and chest, feeling the power that thrummed beneath his skin and how he barely held himself together.
And then she did something unthinkable. She dropped to her knees before him.
James groaned, his entire body tensing, the remnants of his mortality warring with his ascended form. Gods were not worshipped like this, but she was not kneeling in submission. She was kneeling in devotion.
Her hands slid over his hips, her mouth brushing over his stomach, her lips pressing to the place where his heart had once beat. She breathed in his scent, and for one brief moment, it was just James as he had been—the clean and sweet smell of him.
“I love you,” she murmured, and it was the only truth that had ever mattered.
James let out a shaking breath, his hands fisting in her hair, his body breaking apart and reforming beneath her touch.
He was coming undone.
And she was the one undoing him.
He pulled her into his arms, lifting her effortlessly, pressing his forehead to hers, breathing her in like he could not survive without her.
And perhaps he couldn’t.
Perhaps that was the cruellest truth of all.
They had become something more than lovers. They had become the last gods of a broken world. And now, there was nothing left to do but finish it.
James pushed her against the remnants of the altar, his lips searing against her throat, against her collarbone, against the places that he had already marked.
“You were made for me,” he whispered, and it was not a lie. It was as if a prophecy had been fulfilled.
She gasped as his hands tore away the last barriers between them, his fingers sliding over her with something between reverence and greed. He touched her like a man who had been starved, like a god who had just discovered hunger.
