The Sifting (5 page)

Micah pulled out of her mouth, not wanting to come that way. He needed inside her. Needed to see her face beneath him as he drove into her, devastated her sweet body, made it his again. And again.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bed. He loved doing that. His bride. His Sarah. So full of love, passion and hope. And all for him. She’d given up everything but the one thing that was most important.
So far. He had to convince her that she must. But for now, he just needed to make love to her.

Laying her on the bed, he climbed on top of her and she hungrily leaned up and kissed his chest and neck, sucking the skin with a pure passion. She wrapped his waist with strong legs and beckoned him inside with an urgency that made him desperate.

He drove into her hard this time and received her sharp cry with his kiss. She held his face, gasping in his mouth, her tongue seeking his. He gave her whatever she wanted, stroking dominantly along hers as he explored her mouth.

He pulled out of her and slammed back in. Again she gave him
a sharp gasp and he devoured it, his mouth on hers with feverish demand. Micah slid his hands under her upper back and latched onto her shoulders. She was tiny in his arms, fragile. And yet in desire she was unbelievably strong. He curled his fingers over her shoulder blades and began moving within her clenching fire, his rhythm smooth and deep with building intensity edging every stroke.

Micah buried his mouth in her neck, sliding his face along the silky column as wicked flames gathered hard in his body. Devastate and
own was all it knew. He grabbed her hands and she fought to lace her fingers in his. He let her, finding that somehow even better than dominance with her. Holding her hands next to her head, he lifted his upper body to see her beneath him as he prepared for the final sprint to paradise.

He moved faster, watching her delicious breasts move to his rhythm. But the perfect oval of her mouth, the intense agony on her brow, the rising tempo of her cries as he flicked his hips harder, faster…was earthmoving.

“Micah! Oh God, oh God!”

Her desperate cr
y shoved him over the edge. Clenching his eyes, he roared, his body gripped hard by ecstasy. For the last strokes, he fell on her, needing to feel her body entirely on his, sealing his pores to hers. And maybe, hopefully, sealing her fate to his as well.

Chapter S
even

Micah went to the kitchen for a bottle of wine. One was hardly enough to take the edge off. Sarah was sitting on the balcony, star gazing. He didn’t understand how she could behave like they were on their honeymoon, happy and peaceful as could be. He didn’t fucking get it. Was she medicating?

T
he dread of her not renouncing followed every step and breath he took. Fuck, he couldn’t let her be Sifted.

“Master Seven.”

Micah nearly dropped the bottle and spun. “Shit Raleigh, don’t fucking do that.”

“My
sincerest…apologies…sir
.”

Micah sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t handle the old man right now. He took forever to say shit because he felt the need to stress every syllable to convey his eternal and perfect contempt for Micah and everything else. Excluding his brother, Scythe. The gnarly buzzard sang like a virgin school boy for him.  

“I wanted to
inform
you that the family will be home early.”

Micah’s
insides jolted but he hid it. Of course he wanted to inform him. “How early?”

“On the first morn.”

Fuck. “In the morning?”

A slow impervious nod. “
Reven asked if you brought the woman.”

Micah looked at the weathered twig, wanting to break him for just standing there and existing in his life at such a time. He was
Reven’s spy, and right now, digging his eyeballs out and shoving them up his ass was beyond tempting. “And?”

“Indeed you did bring her. That
twas
my reply.”

Micah fought a smirk
at his stupid way with words. “Good.”

“There is to be a wedding, I presume?”

He presumed. Lying bastard. “You do indeed presume perfectly.”

“I have prepared a midnight snack for you and…”

“Sarah.” He hated giving her name. To hear it come out of his unworthy air pipes would be torture. But of course he didn’t want to piss him off. He needed all the help he could get. “She insisted I compliment your culinary talents.”

Pride lit his c
irrhotic gaze. “There is more where
that
came from.”

Micah barely managed a polite nod, detesting the way the man acted like he were butler to royalty, or Bat Man.       

“Oh and…your esteemed brother extends his…enthusiasm.”

“For what,” Micah openly accused.

“He is eager to…meet your new…
virgin
bride, I do believe.”

Micah’s insides turned to burning rock. Women groveled before his perfectly beautiful brother. “I’m sure he is.” Micah wouldn’t be able to take it if Sarah did. She was his, in every possible way, tradition or not, black heart or not, diabolical soul or not
, renouncing or not. He was madly in love with a…
Christian
woman of all unthinkable and blasphemous things. His seamless little plan of seduction had worked oh so perfectly. On him. It would have been humorous to see the look of disgust that was sure to mar his brother’s perfect face except for what he knew would follow.

The S
ifting. Scythe would be all too eager to perform every aspect of the ritual torture if he found out how much Micah loved her. 

He could
never
let that happen.

And now the prick was arriving in the morning. He had no fucking time to figure out what to do.

****

Micah joined Sarah on the balcony, having had far too much whisky
for a desperate man. He’d only downed half the bottle before coming back up with two wine bottles. He was frantic enough at this point to extract a drunk renouncement, whatever he could get.

They sat
next to each other in their separate chairs, looking out at the moonlit ocean. Micah felt worlds apart from her. She peacefully nursed on one of the bottles while he nursed the other. “Talk to me Sarah.” He gazed at her, ready to understand her inside and out, explore her heart and soul so he could cleanse it of the ridiculous faith farce. “Tell me what is so special about your god that you would die for him.”

She
swigged the wine and wiped her lips then leveled her gaze on him, head tilted in consideration. She shrugged. “Well, he did die for me.”

“He died for you. Why would he do that?” Micah knew the entire plan of redemption was flawed, maybe if he could demonstrate that, she would come to her senses.

She waved the bottle a little. “Because… holiness and righteousness is apparently a must
in his world.”

“Why?”

She drew up a shoulder and held it, her brows raised, eyes closed. “My guess is…the universe isn’t designed to sustain the other.”

Her words slurred and he realized he wasn’t the only one near drunk.
“Why would you guess such a thing?”

“Makes sense, everywhere I look. Love seems to be the foundation, the driving force of the good stuff.”

“You said holiness and righteousness.”

“Same thing.”

He studied her. Of course she would have an angle that he’d not seen, or heard before. That was his Sarah. “Same thing.”

She gave an exaggerated nod.
“Which is why he had to die.”

Now s
he’d lost him twice in a row. “I’m not following.”

“I think it’s like…” Sarah
closed her eyes and angled her head up long enough for him to wonder if she’d fallen asleep.

“Like?”

“Like a genetic flaw,” she said softly, not moving from her dozed position.

He tried to understand what she was
attempting to convey without further burdening her brain circuitry, but what he was gathering wasn’t logically promising. “So…you’re saying we’re flawed genetically and you think he needed to come and die to fix that?”

“Exxxactly,” she pointed at him.

Good grief, unraveling her confusion would be wearisome. “Why would a powerful god need to come and die, why not just make it however he wished it to be?”

She gave a long pfffft followed by giggles.
“You people amaze me, truly.”

“You people?”

“Yes…” She nodded and tapped her temple with a squinty eye. “You people who are sooooo smart and have the… audacity to think that there is no intelligence lurking beyond all those silly little Bible words.” She held up her hand as though expecting stupid words from him. “I know, I know, contradictions… inconsistencies. Or?” She leaned forward a little and held up a finger. “Or. Clarifications, and variations.”

He
couldn’t keep from grinning at how cute she was tipsy. But he couldn’t afford to go easy on her. “So the truth changes.”

She shook her head real big. “
I’m sayin’ that…the truth…no wait, back up, back up. Saying that
humans
are like… crystals. And none two are the same.” Her brows drew together. “None two? No two? No two. And when the truth passes
through
these crystals…” she nodded with a
wait for it
smile, “…its reflection…
varies
.”

Micah got hard despite his inebriation.
She was so fucking bright in so many ways. She was as different and beautiful as that explanation she just gave. And whenever she got passionately pissed about what she believed, wow, a major turn on despite how ludicrous he found her ideals.

“So I’m supposed to believe that we inherited a genetic flaw,
and that your god imputed the inheritance—that we have no control over if it’s genetic—to us as sin, and will punish us with eternal hell if we don’t take his Jesus pill?”

She stared at him then busted out laughing. “Oh my
God,
Micah,” she shook her finger at him, “that is actually exactly it.”

“And you find
it just to impute genetic flaws as sin?”

She took another swig of wine. “M-mm,” she shook her head, “not the kind of sin you think. Different kind. This one’s inherent
, it’s a defect, the one sin that we can’t undo or not commit by choice.” She hiccupped. “But all the rest…” she waved her hand, “we commit all of ‘em, every single one.”

“So why impute a defect as sin?”

“No, you’re not getting it. Say two red roses… mix with a carnation.” She shook her head, “no, scratch that, stupid analogy,” she muttered. “Say you have a lock and there is only one
perfect
key that fits that lock. Now say that the one perfect key is the first perfect couple on Earth. Now say that couple sins one time. Are they still perfect? No, they’re not. And therefore they can no longer open that lock, which is Heaven by the way. Now those two perfect people who were no longer perfect had imperfect offspring. They passed that state of imperfection to their kids. Like a genetic flaw. ”

“Okay, stop right there,” Micah cut in. “They sinned, why not punish them and be done, why
not create another woman instead of damning everybody.”

“I thought the very same thing,” she gasped. “
I thought, God, why not start over? Why let this one screw up mess up the whole plan? Then I’m thinking, wait a minute. If this God
really
did create everything then it’d make a lot of sense to assume he knew what the fuck he was doing, right? Plausible. Very.”

Micah licked his lips, ready to eat her in
her chair if she got any fucking sexier. Her passion for god moved through her body like a fire. A fire that Micah wanted to taste and tame. Then conquer.

“
Are you read for this?” she said, sitting forward in her chair. “God damned the entire world for the sins of
one man
so that He could come back later, and…
free
the
entire
world by
one. Man’s. Righteousness
!” She flopped back in her chair with a grin and took another swig. “He’s the fucking bomb if you ask me.”

Micah
had to chuckle. She was priceless. And beautiful. “What if I don’t take his Jesus pill?”

She pffed. “That’s fine, your loss, you don’t have to have it.”

“But according to you, if I want heaven, I do. It’s all conditional.”

“Yeah, and?
It’s His heaven, His plan, you take the Jesus pill or you don’t go. You don’t like it? Make your own damn Heaven and Earth and show Him how it’s done, otherwise, take the
free
gift, the
free
Jesus pill.”

Micah
shook his head, needing to steer this in another direction, this angle wasn’t panning out very well and he was getting impatient and agitated with her Theology. “Even the Jesus pill is conditional.”