Eros Divinum

    Christ alive, I thought, I needed this lunch today. I was sitting on the concrete steps of the riverwalk, wolfing down a Polish like my life depended on it. I had booked it out of my office at five minutes ‘til noon, having skipped breakfast that morning and having had no time to snack all day. Hungry was a generous term, I was ravenous. It was a nice day out and there were always people walking along the river around lunchtime, eating, schmoozing, day drinking and what have you. I watched dogs walking with delight and big important suit types with barely-masked derision as I ate. The boat tours floated along lazily on the water, guides pointing out the corn cob and the Thompson Center and the bridges and whatever else they talk about. I’ve never been on one.

    I killed the hot dog in ten minutes and was left with fifty more to burn before I had to clock back in. I decided I’d stretch my legs a bit and get some more fresh air. I got up and started walking east, staring absently out over the river as I did. The waves lapped gently at the concrete shore underneath plaques describing cleanup initiatives and native biodiversity.

    Walking under one of the bridges I saw a woman rounding the corner and I’d have sworn to you there that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Maybe it was the weeks on end of sexless, mind-numbing office work talking. Maybe I was still delirious waiting for my lunch to digest. Time slowed to a halt as she strode across my path.

    She was as tall as I am, and I’m not short. Instinctively I looked down to see if she was wearing heels, and she wasn’t, just some white strappy sandals. This did not make me feel any more normal about the situation. Her toenails were painted pearl gold and impeccably maintained. I traced my eyes up over her ankles and onto her legs– her smooth, perfect, longer than long legs. The curve of her calf up those alabaster columns led up into- God, I thought, even her tendons are sexy. She was wearing a short enough skirt to give me a generous view of her thighs; thighs begging to have fingernails sunk into them. The slightest bit of her stomach was visible as a river breeze fluttered her pale yellow blouse. The buttons around her chest strained and offered a tantalizingly tiny view of what laid beneath. I could see the barest hint of white lace. Her shoulders arched out, unburdened by sleeves, and her arms betrayed no visible muscle but nonetheless conveyed the confidence of physical strength. Her long, slender fingers were tipped with short stiletto nails painted the same color as her toes. She flexed them and I saw her knuckles pop deft and controlled. I thought suddenly of what those fingers would feel like on my hand, or my neck, or my…

    I snapped out of the thought when I realized she was looking at me. We started to pass each other and I saw her eyes peeking sideways at me from behind her huge, dark, wire-frame sunglasses. They had the wide, round innocence of a doe’s– lashes to match– with the cold, smoldering confidence of a woman much older than she appeared to be. They were a deep onyx black. Her hair hung down in black silken waves to the small of her back, not a single strand acting unruly or out of place. She licked her lips, lined on top with bright red lipstick, smirked, and winked just barely at me.

    The flow of time returned to its normal pace as she passed me and I didn’t even have time to be stunned before I turned on my heel, nearly bowled over some lawyer or businessman or who gives a fuck and started to follow her. She didn’t turn at all but I knew that she knew that I was. Her blouse was bound together in the middle to expose her shoulder blades, and the glimpses of the small of her back I got as her shirt flew up only excited me more. I forgot all about work and followed her up the stairs to street level– her skirt teasingly blocked any view of what she was wearing under it– and into a crosswalk. I didn’t see a walk signal but she didn’t slow down and neither did I. Her pace quickened and I sped up as well, my heartbeat fluttering faster to match. I felt myself starting to sweat and my breathing got heavy. Was it just me or did she look taller? And was there some sort of glow around her head? The sun playing off a window or something, I guessed. I walked behind the woman for a few minutes until she turned into an alley. I didn’t hesitate for even a second before I did as well.

    The alley was empty, extremely strange for mid-day in the Loop, but that was not my primary concern. The noise of downtown muffled almost immediately as I walked between the buildings, but that didn’t concern me either. I had one single concern, and she had inexplicably jumped forward to round another corner. How had she moved so damn fast? Was she trying to lose me? I didn’t care. I sped up to nearly a jog and whipped around the corner to find-

    “Hello,” whispered a voice like burnt honey into my ear. I spun around and she was right behind me, her sunglasses pushed up onto her head, her gaze piercing my soul. She deftly guided my clumsy pirouette to place my back against the brick wall behind me and blocked the path I’d taken in with her arm. I struggled to slow my breathing. Was she even taller? I had to look up to meet her eyes. That hadn’t been the case under the bridge. Whatever.

    “U-um,” I stammered, “hi, uh, I-I’m-”

    She placed a finger on my lips and hushed me gently. “It’s not important who you are, dearest,” she crooned, “nor I. What’s important,” she dragged her nail over my chin and onto the middle of my throat, “is what we can do for each other…” Her finger traced a line down the center of my chest to my stomach, and stopped just short of my waistband. I nodded and felt my lips part involuntarily.

    The woman smirked. “Eager,” she teased.

    I nodded again. She was close enough that I could have counted her eyelashes, if I’d had the faculties to do so. She smelled of lilacs and ginger, and her breath was warm on my face. She moved her hand slowly back up my torso and gently brushed her fingers against my cheek. A breath caught in my throat as I inhaled and escaped as a gentle moan. She seemed to like that. Leaving her right arm on the brickwork next to my head, she began to undo the buttons on her shirt with her left, starting from the bottom and working up. There was a small gold piercing in her navel I hadn’t noticed before. She undid the final button and shrugged her shoulders to let the blouse fall and drape delicately over her elbows, the perfect hourglass of her figure now revealed.

    Her hips curved gently into her waist, which presented just barely enough to grab onto, if she’d let me. I got to see the full picture of her bra that I’d been teased with earlier; it was an intricate lacy number that pushed her perfectly round breasts into place under her popped out collarbones, which moved up and down pleasingly as she rolled her shoulders back. Her breathing was methodical, and watching her chest rise and fall with each inhale and exhale was intoxicating. Her left hand continued up my cheek, over my ear, and onto the crown of my head, as though she meant to push me to my knees. She didn’t have to. I didn’t care that I’d worn shorts, I let my knees scrape on the asphalt and barely felt it. I put my head right where I knew she’d want it and looked up obediently. She blinked slowly and smiled at me. “Good,” she said. I melted.

    Her left arm stayed on my head, her fingers woven into my hair, ready to tug if she needed to. With her right hand she opened a zipper on the side of her skirt and let it fall around her ankles. Her panties matched the bra, all white lace and noxious desire. She slid her thumb gently along the waistline from left to right, then hooked it under the elastic and slowly, slooooooooowly, pulled down one side. Anticipation ate at me like a parasite, but I waited patiently. She seemed to like that as well. Her fingers moved back to the other side and lowered the fabric a little more, starting to reveal the bones and muscles of her hips and pelvis. She continued in this manner, revealing herself piece by piece, demanding I take in every square inch as it was shown.

    Her cock was far too large to have been concealed by her underwear. It seemed to materialize out of thin air as the lace and fabric slid down her legs. It was not immense or overwhelming by any definition of the words, and there was no doubt in my mind I could take it to the base. There was even less doubt that I wanted to. God, I wanted to. I had never wanted anything more. It smelled sweet and smokey, baleful and divine. She scratched idly on my head like you might a cat that had laid down next to you, coaxing me forward with firm suggestions. I leaned towards her and her musk filled my lungs. She pressed her tip lightly against my mouth and my lips parted, tongue lolling out greedy and thirsty, spit dripping down onto my shirt. She giggled derisively and tightened her grip on my hair, holding me just in place while my eyes begged up at her, barely able to taste her. I flapped my tongue up onto the underside of her shaft and she tightened her grip further, but didn’t pull back.

    The salt and caramel of her sweat lingered on my tongue as she allowed my lips around her cock. It fit perfectly, straining my jaw just barely enough to still be pleasant. I wrapped my lips and tongue around her and moved in, slowly taking the whole length of her into the back of my neck. She moaned deep and guttural and her pre-cum burned my throat like whiskey as I swallowed it. Something in my brain told me it wasn’t supposed to feel like that, but the pure electric ecstasy of my nerves and taste buds easily overrode my logic centers. I slurped her up like water from an oasis, like a crust of bread after a week of fasting. Like she was the only thing I needed, the only thing I’d ever needed but never known. I reached her pelvis and she pressed my forehead against her womb, holding me there and twitching inside me. After a few moments’ pause, she pulled almost all the way out to rest her tip on my lower lip again.

    “More?”

    I nodded.

    “You know how to ask, don’t you?”

    I opened my mouth wider and rolled my eyes up into my head.

    “Your words, dear.”

    I shuddered. “P… please… please…”

    She smiled as warmly as I’d seen her do so far and coaxed my mouth back around her penis, pulling me to the base more quickly than before. She started to move her hips back and forth, thrusting firmly into my mouth as I rolled my tongue all over her. I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the sensation. I gave myself over to her pleasure, to her satisfaction, and from that derived my own. I wanted nothing more than to be used, to be a toy for her to finish in and throw away. That alcohol burn continued to drip down my tongue, searing her being into my body bit by bit. I swore I could feel it re-writing my synapses, re-arranging my impulses around her will. I opened my eyes and a blinding radiance assaulted my senses as she quickened her pace and slammed her cock into the roof of my mouth.

    I thought surely I must have been hallucinating, but everything I knew told me it was real. Her head was ringed by a thorned halo, like a wreath of rose stems rendered in pure burning light. It shone on her hair, rusting it like a black cat in morning sun. Her head was raised as though in prayer, her eyes looking straight up into the sky, supplicating from some unseen and unknowable force hidden in the cloudless cerulean. She thrusted faster and a pair of wings like those of a crane forced their way up and out of her back, and spread out wider than she was tall, bathing the alley in their golden glow. A second pair emerged, then a third, forming a feathered ring behind the woman as she screamed her euphoria to Heaven. My moans escaped the corners of my mouth and tears streamed down my cheeks.

    Abruptly, she slumped forward and braced herself on the wall with one hand, the other still pressing against the back of my head. Her head fell forward and her eyes curtained by her hair and illuminated from behind looked through me, her scleras dyed obsidian and shining unsettling and alien. She was breathing heavily and drool was pouring from her mouth, falling onto my head and sizzling as it hit my flesh. She shoved her cock further into my throat and I wanted to gag, I felt like I was about to vomit, but I feared much more the consequences of trying to force the woman away from me. She came into my mouth and it spread down my throat and into my stomach like a cancer, rotting away everything it touched and leaving me purified like a redwood forest burnt to cinders to make way for new growth. Blood pounded like war drums in my ears and my vision filled with crimson as my eyes rolled into the back of my head. The taste of it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, like carbonized toffee, turpentine and arsenic, tastes that I cannot describe any other way but that they were deep muddy brown or shimmering green-orange, or that the taste was like the clarion boom of bells the size of buildings, or that it tasted like feeling oily mud pressed into my palms.

    It was horrific, it was inspiring, it was disgusting, it was succulent. She finished and practically threw me off of her, her wings flaring out like the petals of a sunflower, flapping back and forth in the draft between buildings and silhouetting her form against the wall of the downtown alleyway. I fell to the side and caught myself on my hand coughing and sputtering onto the ground, spitting my own saliva mixed with the woman’s fluids out like her cum had been laced with capsaicin. I looked up at her and saw that her clothes had burned off, only a ring of ash remaining around her feet. She stood with her legs apart and her shoulders hunched, visibly struggling to slow her breathing. Her elbows and wrists were bent almost at insectoid angles, not quite inhuman but just uncanny enough to disquiet me the slightest bit.

    She stared at me again, seeing me this time, and I watched gears turn in her head as she returned to her senses and reckoned with what she’d done. She closed her eyes, breathed a deep sigh, and when they opened again they’d returned to their original imitation of humanity. She inclined her head slightly, easily interpreted as a sign of respect and goodbye. I did the same. She turned in place, wrapped her wings around herself, and vanished. Nothing but a single snow white dove’s feather remained. I told my boss I got sick over lunch and took the rest of the day off. 

{A short story by Leona Maria}