Tonight is the night. It has to be. Anticipation drew in her soul tight.
Celeste stared through the statue’s eyes at the crumbling red brick below. Spanish moss clumped at her cracked toes, early morning fog saturating what she could see of the air in her peripheral vision. Molded in place, she had all her senses and none of her muscularity.
It’d been three hundred years. Three hundred years since the night that witch found her in bed with her husband. Paul the stone mason, just another conquest in her young life. Celeste was beautiful and smart, had reveled in attention when she came of age. Men as lap dogs had never gotten old.
“May you petrify forever. Or until a truly innocent soul arrives with the burden of lust and flesh against your cold, frightful stone and you are reborn unto their life.” The witch had paused, a nasty smile tweaking the side of her thin lips. Her dark hair twisted into wet vines in the misty dusk. “May you rest, never in peace.”
Celeste hadn’t taken the witch seriously in the moment. Even when her body hardened to rock, she still bore hope within the other woman’s stipulation. After all, the truly innocent were abound in the young and naive.
Wrong. As a statue and empath, she realized over time how rare it was. Humans were just too complicated to be truly innocent.
Three hundred years.
She felt the familiar aura across the park.
Alyssa. Happiness seemed to vibrate Celeste’s cursed shell.
Of all the women and all the men, in all this time… This one was truly innocent. Curious but careless. Vibrant. The woman had been drawn to her for some reason, visited often and confessed many things. There was a shadow within her, but the goodness of her soul rang true.
She was the end to the curse, had to be. The beautiful woman whose life Celeste would assume, if only she’d fornicate on her stoned skin.
When she thought about it, the curse to assume an innocent’s body seemed a little distasteful for a woman scorned. But the witch likely thought it was too far fetched to happen. None of them could have dreamed of the immoral values in people of the second millennium.
“Isn’t this shit haunted?” came a male voice.
Celeste wanted to groan.
Christopher. Kristopher? Kystofer?
Whatever. The young man was inferior. Courageous when there was no danger, but he’d wither to dust if ever faced with a challenge. She’d be disgusted by Alyssa’s choice if she didn’t know the draw of an adoring lap dog. Especially one with a perfect body and pretty face. Lord, how she’d loved life back then!
“Why’re you so obsessed with this place?” Christopher’s voice murmured across the mist.
A light giggle laced a sigh. “She just speaks to me.”
The statue ached to straighten her bowed shoulders in pride.
“She?”
Their gazes heated Celeste like the few hours of sun spraying her in blessed good weather. She felt the molecules on her stone rise.
This is the day.
“That thing?”
Thing?!
Fool. Even for a lap dog, Alyssa was way too good for him. When she escaped this mold, Celeste would make sure he faced the consequences.
The wake of Alyssa’s warm fingers down her lower spine stole the bite from Celeste’s anger.
“I know. It’s kinda dirty. Unloved through the years, I guess. But her claws… the danger, the strength in the face of whatever horrors are upon her… she’s just… mesmerizing.” Alyssa’s soul shimmered with goodness, a glow that fed Celeste’s selfish soul.
Chris stepped into Celeste’s line of sight to take Alyssa’s free hand. “You’re mesmerizing,” he told Alyssa.
That line! How she wished she could still roll her eyes!
Why can’t I condemn you instead? Something in Celeste knotted as the thought of Alyssa trapped in stone hit her.
Remorse.
No. She steeled herself against the gnawing humanity. I have earned this. I’ve suffered long enough.
Alyssa’s body pressed against her. The supple humps of her ass. Soft tickles from the ends of her long brown hair as the young man leaned over her. Kissing sounds snared the air and Celeste longed to feel lips against hers. Tongue inside her mouth, on her neck, nipples, and parting her folds.
This should be my life. She should feel the kisses of this adoring young man. To feel his hands on her skin, his cock in her mouth, her pussy, her ass, dribbling his lazy sperm all over her body.
She felt electric. Fuck him. Fuck him on me. Do it.
Alyssa’s head twisted up to look at her and it was like her soul stuttered. Liquid brown eyes sat between high, flushed cheekbones and thick, sculpted brows. Like they beckoned her lips to follow the trail down her long neck and into her heaving cleavage.
Mercy.
Celeste hadn’t taken a breath in three hundred years and hadn’t missed it until now. This woman. She was her past, her present, her future. When she heard his belt jingle open, the zipper lower, and the rustle of panty pulling, the statue wanted nothing more than to be the one who owned her.
“You want this, baby?” the boyfriend asked huskily, as if his cock was everything.
Celeste knew that kind of dirty talk, this kind of man. They all loved poorly. Fucked well. Always needed to feel in control and when they weren’t, god were they annoying.
Alyssa reached between her legs to position him at her entrance. Glanced up at Celeste’s eyes again before meeting his like a prerequisite. “Fuck me. Now.”
When her mouth opened wide, pupils dilating, Celeste knew he was inside her. She wondered about the clutch of her pussy. How tight and warm and wet she must be. At the movements gyrating at her broken angel wing, she could only guess and the ineptitude hurt like a thousand years’ pain.
