Page 7 of Torn

Merry considers herself an exception to this rule. She likes her dainty black panties and matching bralette enough that she’s willing to thwart custom for them. Standing in her knickers, she considers the rack of wardrobe options in her armoire. When none of the eyelet or taffeta styles inspire her, she retreats to the dresser, yanking out garments and flicking them over her shoulder.

No. No. No.

Definitely noooooo.

Ah! Her loose, off-the-shoulder Scorpio blouse will work, if paired with a long accordion skirt.

What about tassel earrings? Or just the fishnet gloves? Maybe both?

As she debates the ensemble’s mismatched potential, a ballad resounds through the garret, and she begins to sway in front of the mirror. This is a good song for pole dancing, with all its sultry swagger.

Maybe when she’s dressed, she’ll exhale against her reflection and write a message there, as a goddess would. She’ll pen something clever and alluring and—

“Who the fuck are you?” a voice rumbles behind her.

3

Anger

He isn’t prepared for her. He isn’t prepared for any of this.

He isn’t prepared to awaken in a strange girl’s bed, nor to discover a heart-shaped, scantily-clad ass undulating in his face.

And he’s definitely not prepared for the scream.

She screeches like a puppy on helium, a squirting lurch of noise that’s both comical and annoying.

And very loud. Her lungs strike the ceiling as she whips around, her backside knocking into a full-length mirror. The fixture quakes. The female drops a shirt that she’d been holding, then plummets to the floor, snatching the cotton and holding it like a shield, blotting out the exposed flesh of her body.

She gawks at him with eyes like sparklers.

An outside observer would assume that he’s an intruder rather than an unwilling inhabitant, the occupant of a bed covered in ruffles, with no blasted clue how he got here.

Or one would assume that they’d…

Anger takes a second to formally panic. He’d been lost in a void, then he’d resurfaced to the sight of disheveled blankets, visible undergarments, and a bobbing rump. There are few scenarios in which a male will find himself in an anonymous bed, especially if he’s greeted with this particular visual: a disrobed female, clad in nothing but panties the color of foreplay.

He’s been intoxicated before. Not recently.

What’s more, he’s never been drunk during the act. In two centuries, Anger has only bedded the opposite sex while sober. Those empty, meaningless escapades had aspired to flush certain frustrations out of his system, to purge himself of feelings that ultimately can’t be purged.

But that’s another damnable story.

He’s not a lightarrow. It would have taken buckets of spirits to wipe last night from memory.

A few saving graces prevent him from having a fit. One, he’s fully garbed. Two, he doesn’t suffer the dregs of alcohol. Three, a shock of red surges up the girl’s—young woman’s—cheeks as she clutches the shirt to her figure, concealing hips and breasts.

A female would not behave this way if he’d spent hours giving her orgasms. And mated or not, an unclothed deity would not act modest in his presence.

Yet she’s an immortal. That much is evident, since only deities can see deities.

There’s only been one exception in history.

An exception that he doesn’t want to dwell on.

A song hiccups through the room. The source is a record player, which has begun to skip as a result of the young woman’s staggering gait.

A dozen fripperies swarm him, all of which belong on a parade float, not on a person. A beaded camisole hooks over his shoulder. A scalloped gown swoons brazenly across his lap. Had she idly tossed them his way while searching for something to wear?

---