EVE
Keep me from deceitful ways; be gracious to me and teach me your law.
Psalm 119:29
“Tell me how you asked for it.”
His voice was strained and I worried that he was angry with me, that what he’d witnessed tonight on the side of the road had been the final strike, the spear that was driven into his side.
Or more accurately – the spear that was driven into my side.
“I should never have stopped walking. I shouldn’t have talked to him. I shouldn’t have tempted him by looking him in the eyes. My eyes weren’t trained to the ground as you’ve always told me they should be. Evil is all around us, Elijah, and I fell prey to it.”
His lips pulled tight, his breathing so steady that it was a beat against my chest. I watched the shadows dance over his face, followed the stray rays of light that reached in to highlight the dark stubble along his tan skin, the twitch of his jaw from clenching his teeth.
He breathed out, long and hard. It didn’t make his voice any stronger. “You are forgiven.”
“There’s more,” I admitted, my eyes wide open while his remained closed. “Something much worse.”
His fingers tightened over my wrists and hip and the first delicious rush of pain crept through my body. I needed more.
I craved it.
“I let him touch me. Not like, you know, that. Not at first. But I let him dance with me. I tried to fight, but he wouldn’t let me go. So I gave in.”
His hands tightened more, another decadent tendril of pain wrapping over my bones.
Seduce me, Eve… No matter what I say, what I do, you must show me how loyal you can be.
I was giving him all of myself, even those parts that I didn’t want to show myself.
“I opened my clothes for him. He promised me he’d help me for just one look. I knew he lusted for me. He touched himself when my breasts were exposed.”
Elijah’s body shuddered against mine, his hands wrapping even tighter. I breathed out the pleasure his teasing torment caused and it felt like his breath stopped for just a split second in response.
Time moved so slowly between us at that moment, I wasn’t sure the world outside our bodies still existed at all.
“I liked watching him touch himself,” I breathed out.
I thought my bones would snap beneath his fingers and I cried out, his grip releasing slowly as his body went completely still.
“What happened next?” he asked with so much tension in his voice that my breath hitched in my lungs to hear it.
“He asked me to take off my pants. To spread my legs and turn around so I could bend over the car. He wanted to see every part. He said he needed to so he could finish what he was doing.”
Elijah’s eyes opened and pinned me with their intensity. Slowly his gaze trailed down between our bodies, pausing on my breasts, on the painfully tight tips, before climbing back to my face.
His mouth was dangerously close. It was so tempting just to push forward that small amount of space to lick my tongue against the soft flesh. He must have noticed my gaze locked on that part of him. His teeth bit down on the pillow of his bottom lip, his hands holding me against the wall until I couldn’t move.
“And you did as he asked?”
“Exactly as he asked. Even when I knew I shouldn’t. I was so scared. So –“ My words cut off. I couldn’t admit that part, I was too afraid of his anger for knowing how I’d felt.
“When I turned, when I was no longer watching him working his hand over, well, over that part of him, he was on me, against me, it felt like he surrounded me.”
Tears streamed from my eyes, my guilt building until even the pain of his hands wasn’t enough to assuage the turmoil consuming me. I took a steadying breath, knowing that I had to tell him everything. That he wouldn’t accept not knowing the full truth.
“I’m sorry, Elijah, for what I have to tell you next.”
“Confess,” he breathed out, his eyes closing so slowly that I could follow his sooty dark eyelashes down, could see them fan out over his skin.
“When I thought he would take me over the hood of that car, when I felt the heat of his body pressed to mine…”
Oh, God, I’m so sorry…
“…I liked it. I need to be controlled. It’s what brings me to life.”
His body shuddered again, his hands so tight that tears sprang from my eyes, euphoria spreading over me until I was weak beneath him.
If his weight hadn’t been pressed to mine, I would have melted to the ground, a puddle of shameful need that could only be reshaped by the strength of his hands.
His lips parted, heavy breath blowing through to caress my face. Our chests beat together, our mouths so dangerously close. Elijah moved, and when I thought he would kiss me, his head angled just slightly, the warmth of his lips trailing along my jaw, down my neck, until stopping on my shoulder.
The scent of his hair overwhelmed me, the excitement of his body pressing against my stomach, stealing every bit of my focus.
When his teeth bit down into my skin, my mouth parted on a cry of pleasure, my mind spinning in so many directions I didn’t know up from down, right from wrong, or where my body ended and his began.
Releasing the bite, he spoke against my skin. “I forgive you.”
“Show me,” I whispered.
A sound emanated from his throat, a growl, or something I couldn’t quite name, but it wasn’t the sound that pinned me to the wall, that broke me down piece by agonizing piece – it was his hands.
Still holding my wrists against the wall, he released my hip to slide his palm down, his fingers moving between my legs until just one tip found the spot that had me crying out from the pleasure versus the pain, from the rush of sensation that was so intoxicating it was a delicious poison seeping beneath my skin.
Slowly, his hand moved, my legs spreading apart on their own. Rubbing back and forth, he teased me, he worked me, his hand trapped me with its movement. I was unable to escape, unable to breathe past the need that consumed me.
A tip pressed against the entrance, circling ever so slow over the sensitive rim that my heart raced, my eyes closed and opened again.
He was staring at me, the intensity in his gaze as frightening as it was seductive. I could feel my sin coming to the surface, could feel the temptation exploding inside me.
His finger slipped inside my body and my muscles gripped him, refusing to let go.
Driving his hand slowly in and out, he watched me without blinking, his eyes locked to mine. I feared to look away, feared not letting him see me, see the devotion I had for him alone.
But I couldn’t hold my eyes open as his hand moved faster, as his other hand gripped tighter over my wrists. The force of him between my legs pushed me onto my tiptoes, the back of my head falling against the wall, my hair tugged from my scalp where it was trapped behind my shoulders.
My hips moved with the thrust of his hand, my bottom banging against the wall with each punishing blow.
Lowering his head, his teeth locked over the taut peak of my breast, and when he bit down, sinking the edges into my flesh, I cried out and lost all control.
Pain and pleasure.
Sin and forgiveness.
Master and slave.
God and the Devil combined.
We were all of those things, and I was the helpless addict, a woman who had no course in life but to seek his staggering warmth.
Another finger pushed in, followed by another. Stretched so tight, I didn’t know how I would keep from being pushed over the edge of madness.
My body wouldn’t stop hitting against the wall, the strength and power of his hand relentless. The sin was drawing closer, pulsing against my skin, fighting to be released as I was shoved into God’s light, knocked from the precipice of hatred and doubt, and catapulted into pure forgiveness.
I was his Eve again.
His one.
His only.
The woman who was born to walk beside him.
Something crashed to the floor beside us, but I couldn’t look to see what clattered against the ground. There were too many stars in my eyes, too much toxic desire that I was lost to everything but the man who continued tormenting me with his hand.
I knew it wouldn’t last. I somehow understood that he wouldn’t give me a part of himself.
When my body relaxed against his, when my lips parted on the final force of breath that was expelled by the release he gave me, he pulled away from me, but still held me up with his hands gripped over my hip and wrists.
I could feel the slickness of my release against my skin.
And it only made me want him more.
I wondered if he would ever fully exorcise the sexual demon that lived inside me.
“You’ve confessed,” he finally said, his voice broken and gritty, his jaw so tense I worried his teeth would shatter beneath the pressure.
He released my wrists and made sure I was steady on my feet before releasing my hip. Cold air rushed in to caress my skin where his warmth no longer existed.
On shaky legs, I followed behind him as we left the room, but something called for me to look back.
I almost wished I’d resisted.
Only feet from where we’d been standing, the crucifix that had hung on the wall above our heads was now embedded upside down in the wooden floor.
. . .
I fell asleep to Elijah’s hands playing through my hair, and I woke up that way as well.
It was still dark outside, the morning sun not yet high enough to breach the horizon with the warmth of its light. From outside the window, the night birds sang their chorus, the land was quiet except for the nocturnal creatures that still hadn’t found it necessary to crawl to their beds.
“You’ve done well, Eve.”
Soft, soothing, and utterly hypnotic, his voice was alive inside me, all around me, swallowing me within its endless depth. I slid my gaze to where he sat beside me, the mattress dipping beneath his weight.
As usual, he was draped in deep shadow, his black clothes lost to the velvet darkness of the room.
But there was nothing dark enough, no shadows deep enough, that could prevent me from seeing the clear focus of his eyes, the penetrating stare that haunted my sleep and chased me through the endless hours of night.
“Elijah,” his name fell off my lips as a reverent prayer. “You stayed with me.”
His fingers stroked through my hair, sweeping it back from my face.
“How can I leave a woman who was made for me? How can I deny myself your perfect obedience?”
Light filled my heart, spilling over into my body until all I could feel was the heat of it beneath my skin. He’d forgiven me. I was his again.
Leaning down, he pressed his lips to my forehead, his fist tightening in my hair. A moan crawled up my throat, tears welling in my eyes in response to his seductive violence.
“I’m yours, Elijah. My body is yours. My soul –“
Pulling his mouth from my skin, he jerked my upper body from the mattress by my hair, his fingers fisting into the thick silk even more. I shook beneath the force of his hold, but I didn’t cry, I didn’t scream or refuse him in any way.
Why was he angry? I’d confessed to everything. He’d forgiven me. He wouldn’t have tucked me into bed so tenderly if I were still exiled on the perimeter staring in at the grace he could offer me.
His mouth pressed against my ear, his breath whispering against my skin. “I may have forgiven you, Eve, I may have touched you in ways I know you’ll always crave, but how can I trust you? You ran from me. You left me standing there while you listened to another man tell you what to do. How can I believe that your devotion is what it needs to be?”
“Please,” I breathed out, the pain of his grasp leaking out of my voice.
“Please, what?”
“I can’t live without you. I’ll do anything, Elijah. Anything you could possibly want or need. Just, please, don’t leave me. I’ll die without you.”
His chest shook with soft laughter. I wasn’t sure if this was a nightmare brought on by the terror of the night, or if he really held me, if he was really laughing at the pain so obvious in my voice.
Trailing his lips along my cheek, he found my bottom lip and bit down, his teeth pulling away fast enough for his mouth to cover mine, for him to swallow the moans that escaped me.
Fingertips trailed down my body, between my breasts, over my stomach, down farther until they nestled between my legs. I was wet for him, soaking – always so ready.
He was my greatest sin.
I doubted that God himself was powerful enough to force the fire of need from my body.
Only Elijah could tamp down the flames.
Only him.
His fingers loosened through my hair, his hand cupping the back of my head as he kissed me while laying me down.
Breaking the kiss, he left me breathless, his face hovering inches above mine. I didn’t mind the loss of his mouth, but when he pulled his hand from between my legs after having set me on fire with his touch, I wanted to scream out my frustration.
Why was he refusing me still?
Didn’t he know that I would give up my life for him if that’s what he wanted?
“I have a task for you, Eve. A way you can prove to me that nothing will keep you from pleasing me. Follow through with this one act, and I can promise you I’ll never let you go again.”
His palm smoothed over my scalp, ice to soothe the fire, a salve to ease the pain.
I nodded my head, my eyes locked to the glimmer in his. “Anything.”
“There’s my Eve, right there. You were always the purest and most devoted of the good little girls.”