“Father…” came the whisper, soft as a feather, warm as honey.

I woke in confusion, searching for the illuminated red of the clock, finding nothing. The bedroom was a well of darkness, a void of light that had no end. Was there a power outage? Not even the amber stars of a midsummer’s night could be seen through the drafty parsonage window. With uncertain hands I groped for the bedside lamp, touching instead a velvet warmth my sleepy mind instantly knew was skin. I drew back in alarm.

“Father,” said the voice again, a little louder, a little closer. I felt the brush of breath against my ear, became aware of a scent so sweet my head reeled from its cloying thickness.

“Who’s there?” I demanded, pulling away to the other side of the bed, dragging the quilt with me. My heart was beating wildly, the rush of blood loud in my ears in the absence of all other sound. It was terrifying, this darkness. It penetrated, sinking in through my pores like a clinging dampness, a voracious chill that slowly devoured everything that it touched.

“Father, you’re a good man.” A female voice, a female hand, resting on my arm.

“What’s going on? Who are you?” I couldn’t find the strength to pull away again.

“You’re a good man,” she repeated. I could feel her closer now, feel the heat emanating from her body. “Did you think Heaven would leave such devotion unrewarded?”

Finally, some light. With aching slowness her form became illuminated, each curve and swell alive with a brightness that seemed to come from within. She was beautiful, and without a stitch of clothing to mar that beauty. Russet hair fell in a tangled weave over heavy breasts tipped with pert cranberry nipples. Her lips were full and adorably lopsided when she smiled at me. Her eyes were blue and cold. Cold as the darkness that remained. Only she was visible.

On hands and knees, breasts swaying, feathered wings unfurling behind her, her smile grew wider as she settled herself into a straddle on my thighs, the weight of her body too real for me to even attempt to convince myself that I was dreaming. Something stirred inside me, a long slumbering hunger lifting its curious head.

“Heaven rewards the faithful.” She rested her hands on my shoulders, her face scant inches from mine. Everywhere her body touched mine was warmed as though by sunlight and I felt myself drawing closer for it, escaping the darkness, seeking her light.

“Are you… an angel?” I asked. My hands were on her hips now, with a mind of their own, discovering again the plush velvet of her skin. She kept smiling. Deep inside my chest, my heart constricted. “Is this a test?”

She laughed softly. “Why would we test you? We know your soul is pure…” Leaning in, she pressed her lips to mine.

Suddenly, I felt as though my body had burst into flame. Nerve endings screeched to life, blood vessels opened to allow the torrent of blood that pounded through me. The pleasure of her kiss had turned me into a conflagration and I pushed her off of me in a panic, scrambling out of my narrow bed, stumbling over slippers that I couldn’t see. “No, I can’t break my vows. This isn’t right!” My chest was heaving as I backed away, feeling the cool wood of the door meet my back.

She sat on the bed and looked at me, her head tilting inquiringly to the side as though unable to fathom my reluctance. She was a glow of light in the darkness, a vision of loveliness, and though her smile never dimmed, her eyes had gotten colder. The very air in the room itself had dropped in temperature and I shivered, unable to help myself from missing the warmth I had experienced with her body next to mine.

“Did God make a mistake?” she asked, one hand sliding along the quilt, toying with the frayed edge.

“God does not make mistakes,” I replied through gritted teeth.

“Then don’t deny me.” She lifted an arm, beckoning. My feet moved on their own as my hands had before, bringing me toward her though my inside was tearing in two, unable to reconcile my growing desire with the instinctive uncertainty I felt. I wanted to flee. I wanted to push her down on the bed and have her. My mind screamed at me to run, my body screamed at me to take her. I resisted, and froze on the spot, neither going forward nor back.

“No.” Why would God do this? Sending me this creature, demanding I break the promise I made to him and had cherished for years?

“No?” Her wings trembled in agitation. “You would throw His gift back in His face?”

“No…”

“You don’t sound so certain, Father.” She stood and came toward me. My heart responded, fluttering madly. My eyes followed the silken curve of her calves up to her milky thighs, to the lush mound at their crook, and up over her soft, round belly, unable to look at anything but her. There was nothing else but darkness, beyond her. “You don’t sound certain, but you look certain.”

She stood in front of me and placed her hand on my crotch, massaging my stiffening cock through the flannel of my pyjamas. I groaned, hips swaying forward. She pressed her body against mine, pleased with my reaction. Warmth seeped into me, chasing away the chill. Her scent encompassed me in a perfume of vanilla, cut with burnt sugar. I wrapped my arms around her, crushing her against me as I held tight, like a desperate man clinging to a life preserver. I didn’t want the darkness anymore. I wanted warmth, I wanted light. I wanted her.

“Do you feel it?” she whispered, her mouth next to my ear. I gasped when her lips grazed my lobe. “This feeling… Isn’t it divine?” She kissed along my jaw. My knees grew weak and I stumbled back against the door again, pulling her with me. She kissed the corners of my mouth, then sucked my lower lip, sliding her tongue inside of me, licking inside, sucking my tongue, sucking, and sucking…

The light of her body grew brighter and I closed my eyes, confronted with a hazy afterglow in her image. I could feel her hands on my chest, pulling buttons open, pushing soft flannel aside. Then she took my right nipple between the dainty tips of her fingers and twisted. An arcing pleasure like none I’d known before shot from that exquisite point through to my fingers and toes. Even my hair, kept short and tidy as befitting my station, stood on end. The moan that broke from my lips was a hungry one, one that begged for more. It was a voice I no longer recognised as my own.

She brought her mouth down, kissed the part she had tenderly tortured, and was rewarded by another moan. I grasped her head in my hands to keep her from going further. She looked up at me, her expression silently scolding. I let go. She continued down.

In bits and pieces she nipped my skin, pulling it gently between her teeth, nursing each slight wound with the flat of her soft, pink tongue.

Feathers rustled as she sank to her knees at my feet, eye level with the embarrassing tent of my erection. She freed it, and, grasping my buttocks tightly, enclosed her mouth around it and pulled me in. Hot breath seared the doeskin sheath of my disobedient cock, quickly replaced by the slickness of her saliva. I shivered, trembling from head to toe.

“Oh God above,” I prayed, voice cracking. “Heavenly Father, please don’t test me like this…”

Her mouth tightened around the base of my shaft and I flinched. She frowned up at me but said nothing, her lips devoted to their ministration. Instead she freed a hand from my behind and slid it between my thighs, cupping my testicles, squeezing them as though in warning.

I groaned, resting my hands on her head, fingers curling into the cat fur softness of her hair. It felt so good to be sliding over her tongue, between the silken inners of her cheeks, into the fleshy constriction of her throat. “Heaven help me!” I gasped, hips pumping forward without hesitation.

She let go of me, grabbing hold of my pajama bottoms instead, dragging them to the ground, baring my lower half. “Don’t you realize, Father? This IS Heaven!”

I was on my knees before I was aware that I had moved, pushing her beneath me, never fumbling for all that I could not see the floor beneath us. She spread her legs wide, grinning wickedly, wrapping her calves around the small of my back and pulling me against her tenderest region. My cock connected with her damp folds, laying snug between them. I bent my head to look between us, marvelling at the luminescence of her unchaste fluid. Where it slicked my shaft, I glowed as well, seeing for the first time something else besides her body alone.

She sighed with pleasure and I looked at her face, the curl of her entrancing lips, her eyelids half-mast over cold, cold eyes. I reached up to touch her, my arm a ribbon of blackness against her. I stroked her velvet cheek, my fingers coming to rest on her bottom lip.

Suddenly her mouth opened and she drew my fingers into that familiar heat. She sucked and bit and I winced but couldn’t draw away. She ground her hips against mine at the moment her teeth broke flesh. My spine curled in a painful pleasure my mind could not fully encompass. My cock throbbed with a heartbeat of its own.

“Release me!” I begged, slumping against her body, my forehead on her chest. My fingers remained caught in her mouth. It felt as though they would snap at any moment.

She chuckled, letting go. “If you want release, I will give it to you. Heaven smiles upon you, Father. Find your pleasure in me! Do you want it?”

“I… I want it!” I was shaking, my desire overwhelming my sense of danger.

Reaching between our bodies, she grasped my cock and guided it into her hole, it’s tightness grasping me and pulling me in. It felt so good to be inside her! I braced myself above her with my hands on either side of her shoulders, the wounded one protesting. As I hilted, she moaned and her head rolled back, her slender neck exposed. I leaned down and licked her skin there, from her elegant collarbone to the lobe of her ear, shocked at the acrid taste of ash that filled my mouth.

“Father, oh Father… so good!” She was moving her hips again before I could think, and I was pulled into her rhythm, fucking her deliriously. The smell of burnt sugar grew stronger, a jarring contrast to her beauty. “Let me give you pleasure!” With a strength that caught me by surprise, she had pushed up from under me, rolling me onto my back, the connection of our bodies amazingly intact. She crouched over me, a blazing beacon, and rode my cock until my senses melted into a fuzzy mess of ecstasy.

Her face was flushed, a rosy pink glow. Her eyes closed as she pumped up and down, her head tilted back. I reached up and took firm hold of her breasts, cupping them, stroking my thumbs over the satin nipples, squeezing them in my hands. She groaned, leaning into my touch. She, too, was losing herself, caught in the undertow of lust.

The room began to take focus around us, suddenly. There was the rumble of a passing vehicle outside, the trail of its headlights sweeping through the room. And in the clarity of that light, no longer illuminated on her own, was the creature that devoured my body into her sopping cunt. Black snakeskin glinted where once there had been creamy velvet. Scorched leather wings hung crippled from her back. With a gasp she looked down at me in surprise. Her eyes were the same as ever. Cold. Blue and cold. Ice that could freeze a man’s soul.

She gave me a wicked smile and her inner muscles tightened painfully around my cock. My fingers dug into her hips, trying to slow her down as she regained her interrupted rhythm. The room went dark again. Her body flared like a dying star, appearing as an angel once more, though smoke was rising from the blackened tips of her wings. I could not look away from the illusion she forced me to see.

“More, Father, more!” Her hands were braced on my chest, she licked her lips hungrily.

My body burned and ached, thrusting into her, aware of the impending cost but unable to stop. My consciousness began to fade. The room grew colder. Inside, I felt as though a light of my own was being extinguished, and the closer I came to being consumed by darkness, the brighter she shone above me.

I came, an unpleasant spasming of my body that somehow brought relief. Her face crowing with pleasure was the last thing I saw before the world crumbled. I fell into darkness, emptied, exhausted.

This is the end, I thought.

“Father!” A panicked voice woke me. “Are you alright? You’re deathly pale! What happened to your clothes?!”

Slowly I became aware of my surroundings. I was in my bedroom, the morning light lay delicately across the ceiling above me. But I wasn’t in my bed, I was on the floor. I tried to sit up but couldn’t, too weak to even lift my head and glance around.

“Stay where you are, I’ll call for help!” The owner of the voice, the housekeeper, disappeared.

My body ached. My mind ached. Even my soul felt as though it was aching, drained of warmth, drained of life. I struggled to recall how I had ended up in such a position. A throbbing in my hand prompted me to lift it, trembling, and examine it. There were several bite marks on the fingers, angry red marks clotted with dried blood. I let my hand drop back to the floorboards, seeking a measure of relief in their coolness. What had happened? I licked my dry lips, my tongue heavy, the taste acrid and sweet, like burnt sugar.

I stared at the ceiling above. Something felt broken. Something I couldn’t see was missing from inside of me, the meat of my fruit hollowed out and the rind left to rot. Nothing was left but ashes. Sweetness and ashes.