Devils Soonest Tempt, Resembling Spirits of Light

Upon hearing his voice from behind her, given all she had heard and all she was battling in her mind, her heart broke. She was dying inside attacked by fear, doubt, love, desperation, and pain. She readied her face to hide the secrets of her tortured soul as she looked into the eyes of her lover. He looked at her with a look that was equally seductive and equally terrifying. Before her stood the man she loved, and she couldn't understand how she could be so passionately devoted and overwhelmingly petrified.

"Who was that you were speaking to, Dove?"

Althea swallowed the growing bulge in her throat as she forced a smile to her lips. "I was taking a walk. I ran into your guard. I…I haven't seen him since that day. He looks well…I mean no lingering problems from his injury." Her voice trembled despite her every effort to appear normal. She could even feel the blood fleeing from her face in her distress. She prayed he would not see the cold sweat she found herself in.

But he kept looking at her with his eyes still piercing straight into her heart and soul. He still held power over her, and his handsome face and devoted gaze weakened her knees as it always had. Whatever she had thought before had to be the result of fatigue, madness, even sickness. Maybe she just needed rest. This was her most precious heart, the very completion of her soul. Suspicion of him would damn herself. Before her stood the man she loved. Although, something in his eyes and his face kept shook her deeply.

He took her hand and placed it in his arm as he led her away from the common area not saying a word. His silence was comforting. Or was it frightening? Althea decided to just keep close to him either way. How could she not be safe in love?

Durai passed Althea's room and continued with her to his own room. Althea didn't even realize she had unintentionally slowed down in apprehension until she felt his forceful tugging of her resistant arm. She muttered some small apology as she continued with him through the doors of his room growing darker with the setting sun.

"Shall I get us something to eat?" Durai asked. Had his voice become deeper? Althea hadn't even realized she had missed a meal. How late was it? Perhaps she truly was losing her mind or becoming ill.

Before her stood the man she loved.

"Not unless you're hungry."

Durai didn't answer this. He had closed the doors to his suite behind him, and he now moved her to the bedroom. Althea was hoping that she could find some way to gracefully excuse herself. She certainly had no energy to reciprocate advances tonight. She looked and studied the room as best she could, but she was too unfocused, too tired. She was so drained that even her eyes began to darken in fatigue. No, not her eyes, the other doors were being shut along with the window coverings. She could barely see a thing now.

"I see more than you think, my love." She could hear his deep voice dancing through the room with the most ominous melody. She widened her eyes to try and see further into the black. She felt his hands first behind her pulling her long hair back away from her shoulders. His hands brushed past the skin of her neck. "I saw the way he looked at you, my flighty dove. Not that I blame him, my beautiful girl. What man could help but look on you with such lust?"

She felt his hands travel from her neck down her back and moving around her waist. It wasn't a gentle caress as his touch had been before. There was a powerful pressure that sent a shiver through her body. "I'm afraid," she stammered, "I don't quite know…"

He turned her around quickly. She could barely make out the details of his face but knew full well the intensity behind it. "I'm sure you don't. You are my simple girl, so innocent." She couldn't tell if he was toying with her, and she wanted to buckle and collapse. It would be easier to just feign fainting and run from it all. But something in her would not let her.

Before her stood the man...

She reached deep within her for strength. She raised her hand to his face and caressed it with gentle strokes, tender and soft. She sought to calm his fire, use every last power she had left to her to push back his passions wherever they might dangerously lead. But the mere touch of her skin to his made his appetites boil out of control. "Durai, I didn't sleep well last night. Could we perhaps discuss this tomorrow?"

He grabbed her hand, and his very eyes glowed with unnatural light. She stepped back thinking she had hallucinated in her exhaustion. Indeed it was no hallucination. He had called forth Magic she could not understand. In the stillness of a sealed room, she could feel the movement of air like the heated wind before a storm. His eyes seemed to devour her and dimly light the room in their vivid glow. And though she tried to step further away, he held firmly to her hand.

Then came his voice, but it was not his voice. It was the breath of darkness and deep, untouched mysticism that rose up from the core of the earth that came from his lips. "You are mine. You belong to only me." He pulled her hand behind him to draw her closer. She wanted to let out a scream in her shock and fright, but his lips were hard upon hers before she could let out a sound. "You are mine!"

Before her stood...

Her lover was gone. Instead she was held by the Devil himself. She could not recognize the man in front of her. "Durai, please. You're scaring me." All she could make out of his eyes were slits of pure, brilliant green. She wanted to turn and run, but she dared not turn her back to him. And if she ran, where would she go? But how could she stay? "Durai, please," she felt tears behind her eyes, but even they were too afraid to fall. "Please don't."

Durai seemed not to hear, or if he did, her fear excited him more. He took her still bound hand and drew it to his ravenous lips. This gave her just enough room to take a further step back, but she was close to the wall with nowhere to go. She could hear a low growl in the room like that of a feral beast in the woods, primal and voracious.

Before she knew what had happened, she was against the wall with the pressure of his body against hers. Her hand was still bound in his and raised above her and pinned to the wall just as her body was. He grabbed her other hand to do the same. Still all she could see were the glowing green of his eyes. His lips kissed her neck in desire. She could feel his intentions harden against her hips, and the air left her lungs in distress.

"No…please…"

"Mine!"

As he pushed himself onto her, against her, into her, and she desperately searched every limb she had to fight back. She felt her head knock against the wall with every ardent thrust, and the pain began to overtake all conscious thought. Soon she forgot all about fighting or escaping and merely focused on surviving. She felt him overtake every inch of her feverishly and violently. And his lips remained on her leaving passionate signatures with every motion, punctuating every crash against her soul. He had truly become the fire that devoured the field in the heated summers that destroyed all in its appetite.

She wasn't sure when she had been moved to the bed or how long he continued there. She was far away now locked deep within herself. She only came back from her hiding place when she felt the motion stop and the weight lift off of her broken body. Her heart that loved him and her mind that protected her could not reconcile with themselves. She was his, and he was hers, but how could this feel so very wrong?

Durai's familiar voice reached her ears then, the voice that she had heard before was gone, and she flinched at the sound. "You see what you do to me?"

........

"What is it you're running from?"

"I don't really want to talk about it now. The sun is almost set, and we need to focus on a safe place to sleep."

"I want to know. Why did you run? Was it that you lost someone? Althea?"

"I…."

"Listen I know it's not easy, but it might help if you talked about it. Are you running because you lost someone you loved?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"I lost myself."