Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(2)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Her toilette.”

It was an innocuous remark, but Madame tipped her hand by shifting slightly in front of him again. Rage lit through him, clashing with the craving for his drink and pipe, and sent heat rushing into his face. “She’s with another man, isn’t she?”

There was no response, which was as telling as an admission. Gabriel brushed past her, pounded up the steps and down the hall, and shoved open the door to Anne’s room. What he saw made his stomach twist in an unpleasant knot. Anne was beneath a man, her slim pale legs spread. A broad-shouldered man with black hair was mounting her with noisy enthusiasm. Gabriel couldn’t see Anne’s face, but she was giving encouraging mewling sounds. His sounds. They belonged to him.

Madame slid to a stop behind him. “It’s just business,” she said. “No sense letting her laze around all day.”

“Dispense with him or I will,” Gabriel told her. He wasn’t exactly sure why he was so angry, but Anne was his. She and his opium and absinthe were all intertwined in his mind, and he loved his pipe and his drink, loved the pleasure she gave him while his mind sharpened and his body floated, while he stretched and strained to achieve an escape from mortality.

Stepping into the hall, Gabriel wiped at the cold sweat on his forehead, struggling to ignore the pervasive nausea clawing at his innards. He knew his human body was addicted to the alcohol, the opium, and the absinthe, and he felt no remorse for that, just merely resented the inconvenient symptoms of withdrawal. Leaning against the wall, he waited. It was a mere jaw-locking, bile-producing three minutes later that a man brushed past him, cursing while Madame offered him three girls in compensation for the one he’d lost.

Gabriel didn’t even glance at the man, that irritated, whining voice familiar, yet not enough for him to care, to look up, to connect the pieces that floated around his agonized, sloshing brain. He was amazed that Madame had carried out his demand to get rid of Anne’s unexpected client, but then again, Gabriel spent an obscene amount of money in her establishment monthly. He was a preferred client.

Anne appeared at the door, clad in a dressing gown, rich auburn hair spilling over her shoulders, green eyes wide and full of tears. “Are you angry with me?” she asked, voice trembling, anxiety palpable. “Madame said it was what you wanted, that you wished to watch, but I didn’t know it was . . .”

Anger was a pale description for the depth of what he felt, but he found it wasn’t directed at Anne. She was a simple woman, and she had always aspired to please him. Madame was manipulative, and Anne not bright enough to see her obvious lies. It startled him to recognize he retained such a well of compassion.

Yet he still was disgusted at what he had seen, so he cut her off by saying roughly, “Just get my drink.” He pushed past her, stripping off his coat and tossing it on the chair at her vanity table.

The sight of the rumpled bedcovers increased his fury. The night was ruined, tainted, the idea of stepping in and escaping gone, replaced by the ugly and brutal reality that escape was ever elusive. He had thought perhaps tonight he’d sketch after he drank, had been feeling a pleasing tug of creativity, but it was all shattered by the sheets, soft and yellow with age, disheveled and stained.

Reaching over, he tore the sheets completely off and tossed them in the corner of the room. Mouth dry, he undid his shirt collar and sat in his chair, sighing. He felt tired all the time, his human body protesting the abuse he rendered it. His tray was next to him—pipe, glass, spoon all waiting. The bottle. Gabriel unstopped it, poured from it until the tumbler was half-full, and reached for his spoon, the sugar already carefully resting in its well. The shaking in his hands had stopped, and he focused with total clarity on the task, body tingling with anticipation, heart beating faster. When he poured water over the spoon, the liquid in the glass below kicked up a deliciously beautiful cloud, and he watched it, appreciating the swirls and ebb and flow as the absinthe turned a milky white. While it stirred and mixed and mesmerized, he struck a match and lit his pipe. The opium took him down into a relaxing languor, the absinthe pulled him back up into sparkling awareness. Together the two gave him a shade shy of bliss. Between draws on his pipe, the first glass went back smoothly, settling into his limbs and easing the ache. The second he drank just as fast, and by the time he was pouring and stirring the third, a cloud of smoke rising around him, blurring his vision and his brain, he remembered Anne, and beckoned her to him.

She went onto her knees in front of him, undid his trousers, and stroked his bare flesh as he relaxed back, eyes closed, glass in hand. He sipped and reached, seeking the sharpness of mind, the sense of confidence, of clarity, the absinthe brought. It was ironic that escape could be achieved by such pure and clear thinking. Gabriel felt more intelligent when he was in the bottle, more rational, more decisive. Perhaps the night could satisfy him after all.

Anne was caressing him with her hands, the tip of her tongue, the moist inside of her mouth, and the pleasure was acute, bright and crystallized, right. Opium, absinthe, and Anne, and he was almost out of his mortality, could almost reach the pinnacle of perfection that he had known as an angel.

Except that he was not in heaven, nor in the presence of God, but sitting in a rickety chair in a dingy room on Dauphine Street, one of the many such rooms around New Orleans, where sex was bought and hungers of all sort satisfied for a mere sixteen cents. He should have been ashamed that he had descended into such depths of depravity, but he no longer cared. All that mattered was that medicinal ecstasy rushing through his veins, that pulsing in his head, that throbbing intensity that Anne’s tongue and fingers drew out from his groin as she licked and sucked on his flesh.

All that pleasure, all that shattering desire coalescing into rigidity, an acute sense of self, and the need to take, to own, to feel everything, yet nothing, to be utterly in control, yet surrender, surged up in Gabriel, and he accepted the physical release. His human body let go of its messy brand of satisfaction into Anne’s mouth, and he closed his eyes, sank back, went up, then down, embracing the darkness, the incoherency, the oblivion.

When he pried his lids back open, he had no idea how much time had passed, but the candle on the nightstand had burned out, the bottle was empty, and Anne was sleeping in her bed. His mouth was dry, and he reached for his glass and tossed back whatever drops of diluted absinthe were still clinging to the bottom. There was a sour smell in the room, but Gabriel ignored it, knowing a foul odor was not out of place in the House of Rest.