Page 24 of Sinful Pride

“I was in a bad place, alright?” I pushed my face into Michael’s stomach, trying to hide there. “Those kids were just all about dramatic depression and weird fashion and I kinda felt that, so the lyrics may be a bit… emo.”

“I will accept every part of you,” Michael reassured me with solemnity he should reserve for when I committed war crimes. Well, my musical creations could probably be called a crime against music, but hey, the songs helped me to channel emotions I had at the time. Who needs therapy when you can have music?

“The stars have fallen, but you stayed up in the sky.

I won’t. I don’t, I can’t fall upwards.

I won’t stray too close to the sun, not again.

Darkness overwhelms me, the eclipse of my heart never-ending.

I am a bird of dark wings,

flying over you like a crow over a funeral,

ready to scavenge the body of emotion you left behind.

Broken, I can’t reach you…”

I sang, the sound of running water and the reverberation of my voice making the music even more intimate, like a secret whispered in the dark.

Michael didn’t stop me. He didn’t stop me even as my voice trembled a bit, not even when I pressed my forehead to his thigh, unable to look him in the eye. His hand patted my hair while I finished the song.

“That was very emo,” Michael joked when the silence became unbearable.

I snapped my head up. “Are you crying?!”

“I can’t help it. It was the most beautiful song anyone ever wrote for me. You felt so deeply, thought about me constantly, never forgotten me. I never forgot you either. You were always on my mind. Every place in Heaven, every sound, every smell, and color reminded me of you. I’m so glad we found each other again.”

“Me too,” I said, and we spent the evening grooming each other’s wings, entwined in gentleness like in a wonderful, warm blanket.

Chapter 9

Aurelius

The high fashion industry I knew so well is based on two rules: the clothes you wear have to either make people want to be you or just want you. No matter if they desired to have you in the bedroom, as an arm candy, or as a connection to contracts and riches. This was a basic fact of life.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there are always tricks to make yourself more aesthetically pleasing. With my performance today I had a very hard task in front of me. Charming the whole room full of demons and angels wasn’t a simple thing, especially when I had to compete with the likes of Michael and Lucifer, both of them peerless beauties in their own right. I knew where my strengths lay, so instead of trying for an angelic beauty or demonic savagery, I opted for something more playful and showy.

Waiting for the signal that everyone has been corralled to watch me and Hellion was ready to play a dutiful stage hand, I struck the opening pose.

The light in the club vanished only to flare to life behind me, filling the closed purple curtains around the stage with brightness and allowing my spectators to see my mysterious silhouette with my wings spread wide. As the tips of feathers sketched a graceful arc, sensual music started to play. A slow dance of mystery and anticipation followed, until my wings dropped along with the beat, the wind from the gesture snapping the curtains open.

I couldn’t see who gasped at my reveal with the lights dimmed once more, but I was immensely pleased to already have such an effect on my captive audience. My elaborate outfit wasn’t what they expected for a striptease, but it only made the spectacle more interesting. The layers of my ensemble were a tribute to a joke I made early in my acquaintance with Abaddon, when I told him I could wear one expensive layer or seven layers of cheap plastic and I would be underdressed only in one of those instances. Abaddon told me he wasn’t either a pimp or the Emperor of China for me to dress like that, and I used that opening to shamelessly flirt with him.

Now here I was, all seven layers on, even though they were no plastic but high-quality materials. What hid below them was a treat. My body moved, becoming one with music as scarves decorated with glittering golden stars flowed around me before I turned around and threw them up, letting them catch on barely visible hooks, creating an illusion of the stars raising to the firmament as Hellion pulled the material up. The scarf’s absence revealed the dark brocade on my body was topped with gold at the shoulders, my back a beautiful scene of a sun staring to peek from the darkness. I let the fabric slide slowly down my arms, revealing a gradient of pink, purple, and orange, the colors of the sky at dusk. With each layer, I continued the story of the rising sun and I had the crowd at the edges of their seats, dozens of eyes watching my every move. I knew the first hint of skin peeking from beneath the fabric drove them crazy and I luxuriated in the feeling, milking the anticipation with deliberate slowness of an artist enjoying the rush of power.

I teased. I gloated. I invited the stares.

In the end, when the sun peaked and then set, all I was dressed in was gold and my pride.

For this final act I have donned luxurious lingerie that made me look like a million bucks. The fabric looked so delicate it may as well be spun from the sun itself and the golden chains covered my body in an intricate pattern, the glinting metal catching the light every time I moved. The soft tinkle was a fitting addition to the music, which became slower, more sensual, underscoring the thrum of rising arousal in my body. I was already as naked as could be without showing my dick, but that wasn’t enough for me.

I closed my eyes, enraptured by my own beauty. By the power to make those powerful beings in front of me feel. Whether I inspired positive or negative emotions, jealousy, or lust, I didn’t care. I just wanted to be everything they could think about for this moment. For nothing more than me to exist. I was special. I deserved it. And I deserved to have some fun.

I wanted more.

My eyes locked with Abaddon. He was sitting in the first row, his red gaze fixed on me. When I professed my hand to him, he didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, but he gave me permission to do everything that I desired today, so he accepted my invitation with no hesitation. I pulled Abaddon onto the scene and pushed him into a throne-like chair which Hellion managed to sneak onto the podium, settling myself in his lap.