Thou Shalt Not Kiss

VII: Stolen Minutes in Heaven

"Forbidden fruit is always the sweetest," Riktor whispers.

"But what if we're caught?"

"God's sleeping, Mrs. Featherstone. You sang him the sweetest lullaby on the last Judgement Day that He's still sound asleep."

"Call me Diva," she says under her breath. "Tell me, Your Reverence, do you bring all your female clients in here?"

"Just Rik please. Only the ones who get me hard through the reading. Did you notice?"

"Yes," she replies as she gropes and strokes his erection, eliciting a moan from him. His cargo pants are made of lab-grown caribou fur and are glossy to the touch. "This big bad boy is pretty hard to miss."

His lips swoop down for another lip-lock and this time, she returns the kiss. Another pagan god of Blinkers is Yue Lao, who connects lovers with the invisible Red Thread of Fate, stretching from pinky to pinky. But even without a red thread or the consummating act deterred by the Second Commandment, Riktor can feel their electrifying connection. And in between steamy kisses and mingled breaths, the two-inch strings of saliva are fleeting yet eternal. Even with such an innocent act as kissing, they are bound, body and soul. Their lives are in each other's hands now. They're conspirators.

They take off each other's multiple layers of clothes. Riktor's muffler, fur-collar coat and turtleneck sweater. Under her long cream teddy coat, she's wearing a white bodycon dress with immaculate fur trim across the straight neckline, suggestive of feathers. This reminds him of the unfair name she's being called on the Firmament: upstart crow beautified with Seraph feathers. Under the bodycon dress, she's wearing a caged bra, corset garter belt and panties; all white.

The last items they take off are their visors, revealing their eyes made milky-white by a thin film over the lenses. It's said that the first Blinkers suffered from either cataract or corneal scarring from the blinding Pillar of Sulfur, which was a harsh and very literal fulfillment of Matthew 5:29: "And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."

Their ears are mobile and pointed. They're much more sensitive, both to sound and touch. With her fingers, she shyly combs her golden locks over them but he exposes them again by tucking her hair away.

"Don't do that," he scolds her.

"They're freakish. Not in God's image."

"They're beautiful. They make you look elfin."

Riktor rubs the back of Diva's ears and she lets out a long, abandoned sigh while her eyes roll far back into her head.

Shed carelessly around them, all her white clothes make Riktor think of the Old World idiom "pure as the driven snow". On post-Rapture Terra, the only snow they get is a dirty gray type called snust, which makes him deeply appreciate the bountiful blessing now spread out under him.

"What's the highest gate in heaven?" he asks her between gentle thrusts.

"Araboth," she answers with her eyes closed. "The seventh."

"There's an eighth gate," Riktor says in a breathy voice. "I'll take you there. I'll take you farther than your husband ever could. I'll take you to the eighth. Over and over and over again."

He feels her nails dig into his back and her legs tighten around him.

****

He keeps his word and they do it a total of four times. They're like old lovers who desperately missed each other's bodies and are determined to commit shapes into memory to help tide them over till their next tryst. The trouble is, there's no way of telling time inside the Sanctum.