A Flower in the Ash

Thomas' eyes flicked away for a moment, uncomfortable, but then filled with longing at her fantasy. "It must be the greatest thing in life..."

She gave a throaty chuckle, and murmured "It is, honey. There's nothing better in life than sex. You see? The Orders wouldn't deny us such a wonderful thing."

Her smile was bitter this time, and a shadow lurked behind her eyes, but Thomas was blissfully oblivious.

~~~

"nnnnNNNNAAAHHH~~!"

Leora tossed her head back and screamed as Moloch rocked his hips beneath her. Her knees clenched against his sides and her toes curled. She sat bolt upright, clawing at his ribs as her entire body contracted around the hard cock, thick as a bridge bolt and twice as ribbed, that thrust into her from below.

He increased his pace as her body went rigid on top of him, and lifted one hand to caress the side of her neck while the other took one of her hands and entwined with her fingers. When her panting cries finally calmed and she started to go slack he slowed, then stopped. Leora's sweat-soaked chest heaved for air. When she'd caught her breath and collected her wits she brushed her hair aside and looked down at him. "Did you finish?"

Moloch grinned. "Not yet, beautiful." She rolled her eyes and sighed "Oh, my god. Are you close? I don't know if I can take another round."

He snickered. "I have faith. I think you'd go all night if I had it in me." She blushed bright red.

"I haven't met many human women who would even let me try to get my tool inside them, since I shed my angel skin. But you take it like you were made to fit me."

Leora scoffed at him. "That monster would shame a horse! It's lucky for you there's a woman in the compound that can take a horse."

Moloch just smirked, and swatted her thigh. "Don't pretend you don't like it. Get off me. On your knees, show me that cute little butt."

She closed her eyes and did as he told her, mouth hanging open, gasping breathy anticipation. The demon sat up and rose to his knees, shuffling up behind her and placing his hands on her hips. She bit down had on her lower lip, squeaking softly at her own roughness.

When he plunged his rod into her this time he didn't bother taking his time, and she didn't try to hide her throaty moan.

~~~

Leora was dozing, ignoring the constant jostling of the transport's tires on shattered, decaying asphalt through a mixture of willpower and exhaustion, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Another survivor beside her, an older man she knew only by association with the machinery depot, gestured behind her. She struggled upright, aided by a sudden bump as the truck's rear tire hit a fallen chunk of concrete, and turned to scan the broken horizon of the badlands.

Dead ahead, a standing column of rotten concrete bore a rusted but unbent sheet of steel, clearly hung there in an era after the column's original intended load had fallen to ruin. On the sheet, embossed with trails of spattered metal laid with a primitive arc welder, hand-written letters read "ABADDON."

Leora looked back to the older man, hoping for some explanation, but he just stared back at her, nonplussed. A feeling of foreboding rose within. She remembered the lessons she'd been taught by the village tutors regarding the apostates, about the slave yards and torture pits dug into the basements of these ancient ruins. The myriad hells, they'd been called. The desperate deviants who lived there were said to obey no law but the power to kill, and to howl at the moon from dusk til dawn every night. Moloch didn't seem mad, in fact to the contrary she found his calm confidence comforting, but she found herself praying he was not fooling her.

A few short minutes later the old chemical-burning land transport trundled through a wall of mortar and block, patched with piecemeal iron barricades where the masonry had crumbled. Sentries with long bolt-shooters stood guard on either side of the gate. She looked up at them fearfully, and was surprised when they smiled and waved to the half-dozen occupants of the transport bed. From the corner of her eye she caught the old man wave back cautiously.

Shortly, the truck pulled to a stop in what seemed to serve as a public square. All around, people emerged from shabby homes cobbled together from rusting metal, ancient weathered planks, powdery vinyl sheets, and anything and everything else one might be able to carry back from the ruins.

Leora gaped at the strangeness of the people she saw appear before her. A dark-skinned, white haired old man emerged with only one arm. A young woman approached around the corner of the house next door, almost unrecognizable under a thick cloud of metal trinkets and curios fixed through piercings in her face and hands. Across the square, a middle-aged woman, bare to the waist with every inch of visible skin covered in tattoos of birds and fish. Hiding behind her decorated leg was a six year old child, with a dark blue crescent moon tattooed across his face from forehead to jawbone. Nowhere in sight was a single article of regulation clothing, except in the truck bed.

The cab door swung open with a piercing shriek of metal begging for grease, and Moloch stepped out and stretched. A cheer went up from the people in the square. The tattooed boy bolted across the open space giggling, to grab the man's boot-glad leg. Several other children of various ages followed close behind, including a twelve-year-old-boy stark naked by painted from head to toe in a kaleidoscope of colors. Another wore a headband of plastic film with a stiff wire threaded through and bent up in an imitation of the tall man's horns.

Leora and the rest were helped out of the truck by a crowd of hands, and ushered away into a large concrete building, built thick enough to withstand the years and weather that had come and gone since its creators had left the city to rot. Moloch waited for them to gather, then addressed the crowd, bidding them to be welcome in his home. His words did not stick with Leora. Her mind whirled with the day's events, and she only wanted to sleep.

Mercifully, the speech was over shortly. The six survivors emerged back into the sunlight to see two more transports laden with familiar faces pull to a stop, to further celebration. Somehow she found herself with the tattooed woman's arm around her shoulders, guiding her through the door of a humble shack assembled mainly from corrugated metal panels and iron tubing.

The woman led her to a crude pallet on a raised frame of wire and spring and urged her to lie down. "Rest, sweetie. You'll be needing to sleep after what you've been through. I'll start some food while you sleep, and once you've woken and eaten I'll explain everything that I can. This is home now, you're safe here."

Leora let herself be coaxed onto the bed, but caught the woman's hand and sat up again, concerned. "What do people do here? What will I do? I'm a waitress! I don't know... what to..." She trailed off, and the tattooed woman smiled at her. "You can do whatever you like, dear. Abaddon is a free place. Nobody can tell you what to do, not even Moloch."

~~~

Leora rocked rhythmically as Moloch tugged at her hips, thrusting fast into her womanhood. She'd abandoned any pretense of strength and lay with her face half-buried in a pillow, moaning desperately into the cloth. Sweat beaded on her back, and one hand gripped some unseen edge of the steel frame of the bed. Behind, her red-skinned lover held her hips in a vise-like grip, her knees lifted off the bed. He grunted crudely with each thrust, fast approaching the peak of his frenzy. When he found his climax he announced himself with a roar. His strokes grew short and unsteady as he released his seed into Leora's depths, and she sighed with relief as he finally grew still. "Shit, I thought you were gonna kill me." Her hips sank as his grip relaxed and her knees took her weight once more.

He bent forward and braced himself with one arm, catching his breath, until he could finally gasp a response. "You always say that, babe. But you keep coming back." With a deep breath and a groan he shuffled back and dropped to all fours, dipping his face towards her soaking wet behind.

Feeling his breath on her nethers, Leora rolled onto her side and flashed him a brief smile. "I'm good, thanks. I came ten minutes ago, remember? Lie down, I need a cuddle."

He gratefully nodded and crawled up beside her, then flopped onto his back. She threw a leg over him and lay down on his broad chest, head resting on his collarbone. She let out a gusty sigh and let her muscle relax into jelly. She ran the fingertips of one hand gently over his sculpted muscles, and her eyes slowly closed.

Moloch wrapped his arms loosely around her and listened to his own breathing slow. A minute passed in stillness, until he finally spoke, sotto voce, gently breaking the silence. "Some times I can't believe you could really enjoy... all that. I'm twice your size. I worry I'm going to hurt you one day."

Leora nuzzled his chest, and murmured "You do, every time. Just a little bit." He swallowed audibly, and said nothing. She lifted her head to meet his gaze with a soft expression. "I do like it. You know I asked you to be rough. I trust you to know my limits, you've never given me reason not to." She held his eyes for a moment, then put her head back on his chest. "It excites me. I feel out of control, beyond my limits, but you're there with me so I'm not scared. It always hurts the first time you put that ugly thing in me, but not for long. Then it just drives me crazy." She giggled softly and ran a fingertip around his nipple. "There's nobody else I can feel quite like this with. Everyone I trust enough is too short."

Moloch stroked her hair with one hand, and silence fell again. They lay still, listening to each other's breathing, until the sound lulled them to sleep.

Leora awoke some time later with a kink in her neck and groaned and pushed herself up on her hands, stretching her muscles and feeling them speak back to her in words of overwork and bruising. She groaned, and Moloch stirred and opened his eyes. She crawled to the edge of the bed and hung her heels over, then rolled her head to try to work her neck loose, and complained to her lover. "Shit, I'm sore all over. I should know better by now than to fall asleep on you."

He sat up and laid his hands on her shoulders and began kneading her sore muscles. She groaned her appreciation, and leaned back into his grip. He worked her silently for several minutes, while she let out little moans and grunts. Finally his attention waned and he moved closer, stretching his legs around her and over the edge as well, and pressing his body tightly against her back. She relaxed back into him with a peaceful look on her face.

He reached around her to take her hands in his own and kissed the top of her head. "How did Tenobia go?" Leora sighed squeezed his hands. "The angels arrived earlier than expected. You must have heard." He nodded. In a small voice she added "Just like Brigmarsh."

"It was bad. I'd been there for almost a month, getting to know them, preparing them to question the Orders. There was this... young man. Barely more than a kid. I'm sure I was his first woman. He was so sweet. He *wanted* to believe everything I told him. He just wanted to be happy." She paused, and swallowed a little lump in her throat. "They shot him in the back fifteen feet from the transport, as we were loading up to make a run for it. Fuck, Moloch... It's brutal. How could they do that to people just for wanting to be who they are?"

It was Moloch who swallowed this time. Leora paused, and after a moment he spoke. "They truly believe they're helping. It's terrible, but it's the honest truth." Leora felt him turn his head away. "When they... when we arrived, we saw an entire planet full of resources, squandered by a species with no self-control, killing each other almost as quickly as you were killing yourselves. We needed a home, and we thought that we could... step in and... correct things. Set order, preserve this world to sustain both our races, and keep you from self-destruction in the process. We didn't understand what we were taking away from you. Most of us still don't."

He fell silent, and Leora stroked the back of his hand. "I forget some times you used to be one of them."

"Honestly I prefer it that way. There are days lately that I forget too. I'm not sure if that should scare me or not."

Leora turned her head back and looked up at the demon. "You know I don't resent you, right? You and the rest of the demons. You saw it was wrong and you changed, and now look at all you've worked to create for us. Abandoning your people to live out in this wasteland with us. You're even becoming more like us. You've turned your body into your first work of art. Out here in the badlands nobody sees humans and angels. There's just us, apostates, looking after one another."

He looked down and smiled at her. His eyes were wet. She reached up and wiped at his eyelids before a tear could spill. She stood up suddenly and turned to sit in his lap. They embraced, and silence fell for a while, broken only by a few short sniffs from the red-skinned man.

Eventually his eyes dried, and he bent and kissed her head again. She squirmed in his lap, and the motion suddenly reminded him they were both still naked. He looked down at her with a quirked eyebrow and an inquisitive sound. She licked her lips, then muttered darkly "...'m still horny."

Moloch touched her hip, and dragged his fingernail up her side towards her armpit. She yelped and leapt to her feet, and he laughed. "How about another go then? I'm feeling refreshed, and you look just as delicious as when you walked in here."

She glanced at him sidelong and smirked. "I'll have to pass, buddy. Rain check though." He looked away disappointedly, and she reached out and ran a finger down his jaw. "I love the thrill you give me, honey. I don't want to ruin it by making this a commonplace thing. But you know I'll come back for that monster of yours before too long."

She groaned and stretched, then retrieved her clothes from where he'd tossed them on the floor. Moloch lay back on one elbow and watched her dress. "Where are you headed?"

"A little jog and a shower," she said, pulling her shirt over her head.

"...and then?" She turned a piercing look at him and paused, shorts in hand. "Nosy! ...probably down to the longhouse. Some of the boys working rescue ops have been looking grim lately, thought I'd see if a few of them wanna have a fuck, maybe cheer them up."

Moloch gave a little cry of surprise. "Ah! You slut!" Leora drew herself up and squared her shoulders, a look of pride and daring creeping across her face, spread across her face. "Why not? It's my right! Shit, it's my *job*! 'Abaddon is free', remember? Being a slut is what got me here in the first place, why should I try to be something else?"

He nodded, agreement and humor on his face, but said nothing. She waited for a moment, then stepped into her bottoms and tossed her hair expressively. She paused in the doorway to glance back over her shoulder, then stepped outside into the sunshine.