Chapter 5: The Guardian's Wrath
Jules’s throat constricted around Mike’s cock, a tight, wet heat that made his toes curl. The rhythmic, driving slams of Casey’s strap-on into Jules’s ass sent shockwaves through the therapist’s body, making her full, C-cup breasts jiggle and bounce with each impact. Spit gathered at the corners of her stretched lips, slicking Mike’s shaft in a glistening trail.
“Tell me,” Jules gasped, pulling off his cock with a wet pop, her voice strained, “how Stacy fought back.”
Casey, gripping the harness of the strap-on, drove it deep again, the synthetic cock burying itself to the hilt in Jules’s ass. “We only found out later from Stacy,” Casey grunted, her own arousal a slick ache between her legs. “So it’s all secondhand.”
The nursery was bathed in the soft, blue glow of a nightlight shaped like a crescent moon. It was silent, save for the gentle sound of Rick’s breathing. Then the temperature dropped.
Polluck, the battle-scarred tomcat, was on the dresser in an instant, back arched, every orange-and-black hair standing on end. A low, continuous hiss rolled from his throat.
Stacy, dressed in black yoga pants and a tank top, didn’t need the warning. She’d felt it—a pressure in the room, a sense of profound wrongness. Her 9mm was already in her hand, the cool metal a familiar comfort. She moved between the crib and the closet door, her body a taut, athletic line.
The shadow peeled itself from the corner where wall met wall. It was no longer a jagged silhouette of joy or sorrow. It was sharper, hotter. The deep blues and violent golds of its origin swirled like oil on fire, and its edges crackled with silent, black heat. Its voice, when it spoke, was the sound of breaking glass under pressure.
“Mommy left me.”
It wasn’t a cry. It was an accusation.
“You’re not getting near him,” Stacy said, her voice flat, her aim steady at the center of the swirling mass. Polluck’s hiss rose in pitch.
“She made me. She loves him. She left me.” The figure took a shuddering step forward. The rug beneath it browned and crinkled, as if scorched. “I will have her love. I will take his.”
Stacy’s finger tightened on the trigger. “Last warning, you miserable splotch.”
The front door downstairs burst open. Footsteps pounded up the stairs.
“Stacy? You here?” Hank’s voice, confused and urgent.
“In the nursery!” Stacy shouted, not taking her eyes off the advancing shadow.
Hank and Fatima appeared in the doorway. Hank, big and solid in a mechanics shirt, blinked. Fatima, her voluminous curves wrapped in a silk robe, took in the scene with a single, piercing glance.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Fatima swore, her Arabic accent thickening. “It’s a khalīq. An emotional echo given form. The Man in the Suit… he spins this nonsense about ‘balancing emotional accounts,’ but he’s just a thief with a philosophy degree. If he took a painting, he got more than he bargained for.”
“I know!” Stacy shouted, her arm unwavering.
The child-of-anger flinched, its swirling form pulsing. “The Man… the Suit?”
“Yeah,” Fatima said, crossing her arms. “He’s the one who ripped you out of your home. Used you. Casey painted you, but he stole you.”
The crackling silence that followed was deeper than before. The scorching heat in the room coalesced into a new, focused intensity.
“He took me… from Mommy?”
“Yes,” Fatima said simply.
The shadow drew itself up. The colors solidified into something darker, more purposeful. The voice, when it came, was a vow etched in stone. “Then I will unmake him. I will tear his silver grass and shatter his glass leaves. He will know what it is to be alone.”
With a sound like a sigh of burning paper, the figure vanished. The oppressive heat lifted, leaving only the faint smell of ozone and the browning stain on the carpet.
Hank let out a long breath. “Holy shit. How did you hold it off, Stacy? That thing looked like it wanted to cook you alive.”
Stacy finally lowered the gun, her shoulders slumping a fraction. She looked at the crib, at the sleeping, oblivious Rick. Her face, usually so composed, was naked with a ferocity that was more than protective. “I will do anything for love,” she said, the words quiet and absolute.
In the office, Jules paused, the rhythm of Casey’s thrusts into her ass faltering. “What did she mean by that?” she panted.
Then the climax took her. It ripped through her body, a violent, clenching wave that made her scream around a mouthful of air. She pulled off Mike’s cock, spun on trembling legs, and fumbled with the straps of Casey’s harness. Casey helped, her own hands shaking, and the strap-on fell to the plush carpet with a soft thud.
Jules pushed Casey down onto the couch, spreading her legs with an urgency that was all need. She buried her face between Casey’s thighs, her tongue finding Casey’s clit with a desperate, hungry precision. She ate at Casey’s pussy like a woman starving, lapping up her wetness, driving her tongue inside her.
Still buzzing from her own orgasm, Jules wiggled her ass in the air, a clear, wordless command. Mike, his cock aching and ready, moved behind her. He guided himself into her soaking pussy, still loose and slick from the strap-on, and sank into her with a deep, guttural groan. He fucked her with hard, measured strokes, his balls slapping against her.
Jules lifted her mouth from Casey’s core, a string of saliva and Casey’s juices connecting her lips to Casey’s swollen flesh. “But what did she mean?” Jules insisted, confused, as Mike’s cock filled her.
Casey, writhing under the dual sensation of Jules’s mouth and the sight of her husband fucking the therapist, gasped out the explanation. “Johnny… Jan’s brother, the time wizard… he messed up. Years ago. An 18-year-old Stacy got a trip to the future. She met Rick. Our Rick. But he was 19.”
Mike grunted, driving into Jules. “They hit it off. Like, stupidly in love. Have managed to… get together a couple times since, thanks to time travel being weird.”
“So they’ll probably be inseparable when they finally catch up in real time,” Casey moaned, arching her back as Jules’s tongue circled her clit again.
Jules paused, Mike’s cock still pumping inside her. “And that’s not… weird for you? Your friend is in love with your infant son?”
Mike and Casey, in unison, managed a half-shrug despite their positions. “Our lives are weird anyway,” Mike said, as if that explained everything.
Casey added, her voice catching, “She was visiting once, a few months back. Looking at Rick with this… this sad, lonely look. We knew. We took her to the bedroom.”
The memory flashed, vivid and warm amidst the current chaos.
Stacy, strong and usually so put together, had been quiet that evening. Her eyes lingered on Casey nursing Rick, a complex ache in them. Later, in the dim light of their bedroom, it was Stacy who made the first move, kissing Casey with a desperate hunger. Mike joined, his hands exploring Stacy’s sculpted body, finding the tension coiled in her muscles. They had spent hours there, a tangle of limbs and sweat. Mike fucking Stacy from behind while she went down on Casey. Casey riding Stacy’s face while Mike took her from behind. It was fierce, athletic, and profoundly tender—an exorcism of loneliness performed with lips, tongues, and cocks. They had fucked the emptiness out of her, temporarily replacing it with the solid, sweaty reality of their bodies.
In the present, Jules came again, this time with a broken cry as Mike’s thrusts grew frantic. She collapsed forward onto Casey’s belly, her body shuddering. “Fuck,” she muttered, unprofessionally, into Casey’s skin. “That’s… that’s both deeply taboo and incredibly hot. Probably why it’s hot.” She took a few deep, composing breaths, the therapist reasserting control over the woman. She pushed herself up, Mike slipping out of her. They all shifted, a sticky, exhausted tangle on the large couch, taking a moment of breather.
Jules reached for a towel, cleaning herself perfunctorily. Her hazel eyes were sharp again, analytical. “So. During this confrontation—Stacy protecting Rick, the child’s vow of vengeance—where were you two?”
Casey wiped sweat from her brow, exchanging a look with Mike. “We were still stuck. In the Titian painting. Mike and Godfrey were chasing down the fake Andromeda.” She gave a tired, sarcastic smile. “And a very naked, very pissed-off Mara was still chained to that rock, shouting at Jan to get her the hell out of there.”
“And a very naked, very pissed-off Mara was still chained to that rock, shouting at Jan to get her the hell out of there.”
In the office, Jules’s eyebrows rose. “So you were still captive? While your child was being threatened?”
Casey nodded, her face tightening with the remembered guilt. “Yeah. It was… not a great feeling.”
The memory unspooled, sharp and surreal.
The previous Saturday afternoon stretched across the painted sky, the Mediterranean sun beating down on the rocky outcrop. Mike and Godfrey had finally cornered Andromeda near a stunted, improbably placed olive tree. She was still wearing Mara’s blouse and slacks, which were now smudged with ochre pigment.
“Come on,” Mike said, breathing heavily. “The chains aren’t that bad. You get a classic pose.”
Andromeda rolled her eyes. “It’s the principle. The narrative oppression.” But she went with them, shuffling in Mara’s too-big shoes back toward the chained, nude, and seething lawyer.
“Jan!” Mara barked, rattling the manacles. “A little help? Or are you just going to stand there appreciating the view?”
Jan was, in fact, squinting at the horizon. “I’m working on it. The lock’s… metaphorical. It’s taking a second.”
A sound ripped the air. Not a crash, but a dry, prolonged tear, like canvas being shredded by an invisible hand.
They all turned.
A hundred yards away, across a stretch of painted sea that shouldn’t have been there, a jagged rift hung in the air. Through it sprinted the Man in the Suit, his impeccable gray suit rumpled, his tie flying over his shoulder. His face, usually a mask of placid authority, was twisted in raw, undignified panic.
He vaulted over a rock, hit the ground running on their side of the horizon, and without breaking stride, plunged through another, smaller tear that shimmered like a heat haze. He vanished. The second tear sealed behind him with a faint pop.
A heartbeat later, the child-of-anger emerged from the first rift.
It was larger now, a shifting column of char-black and furnace-orange. The air around it wavered with heat. It paused, its form pulsing, scanning the landscape. It didn’t see them, or didn’t care. It moved toward the second tear, a low, grating sound of fury emanating from its core, and pushed through. The tear sealed again, leaving only the silent, unreal sea.
Andromeda let out a low whistle. “Well. There’s something you don’t see every day.” She shrugged. “For me, I see Perseus attacking the sea monster every day. This was more interesting.” She looked at the rock, then at her borrowed clothes, then at Mara’s furious, naked form. “You know what? The rest of the world is somehow too weird. I’m ready to go back to my chains.”
A flash of white light, quick and soundless.
Andromeda stood chained to the rock, still wearing Mara’s business casual. Mara stood free beside Mike, completely naked.
“Hey!” Mara snapped, crossing her arms over her breasts.
Andromeda laughed, the chains jingling. “Can’t blame a gal for trying.” Another flash, and the clothes swapped places again, leaving Mara dressed and Andromeda naked in her chains. “Better luck next time, counselor.”
Mara simmered, her cheeks flushed with more than sun. “This is humiliating.”
Casey, trying not to stare at the now-nude mythological figure, patted Mara’s arm. “We’re all friends of Jan’s. We’ve all seen each other naked. A lot.”
Jan piped up, grinning. “And you look good naked, Mara. Really. Athletic.”
“None of you are helping,” Mara grumbled, straightening her blouse with sharp, annoyed tugs.
Mike pointed toward the spot where the two rifts had been. “We should try to follow them. The Man and… the kid.”
Jan surveyed the blank horizon. “No one seems to have a better idea.” She started moving, Godfrey trotting at her heels. “Come on. The trail’s gonna be cold, and I hate running in sand.”
The group dashed off, scrambling over the painted rocks. Andromeda’s voice called after them, tinged with amusement. “Good luck! Particularly given her shoes! They’re terrible for running!”
Back in the sterile office, the memory faded. Jules had closed the distance between them on the couch. Her skin was warm and smelled of sex and lavender-scented lotion.
“You obviously got out of the painting,” Jules murmured, her voice a low thrum. She placed a deep, searching kiss on Casey’s lips, her tongue slipping inside. Then she turned and did the same to Mike, her hand wrapping around his hardening cock, stroking him slowly as she kissed him. She pulled back, her hazel eyes dark. “So tell me. You followed. What did you find?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she guided Mike onto his back and straddled his hips, lowering herself onto his thick cock with a slow, agonizing roll of her hips. She took him all the way, a soft sigh escaping her as he filled her. Once seated, she leaned forward, bracing her hands on Casey’s shoulders, and captured her mouth in another kiss.
“Tell me while we move,” Jules breathed against Casey’s lips.
Casey’s hands went to Jules’s hips, feeling the muscles work as she began to ride Mike. The slick, hot friction of Mike inside Jules was a visible, audible thing in the quiet room.
“We found a door,” Casey gasped, as Jules’s rhythm picked up. “Not a tear. A real door. It was just… standing in the middle of a Van Gogh wheatfield. A plain, brown, wooden door.”
Jules’s body was a pendulum of pleasure, rising and falling on Mike’s shaft. “Where did it go?”
Mike’s hands gripped Jules’s ass, helping her move. “Backstage,” he grunted, his hips meeting her downward thrusts. “That’s what Jan called it. The space between paintings. Where the Man in the Suit stores his… acquisitions.”
The memory of that place invaded the present, cool and unnerving.
The door had opened onto a narrow, endless corridor that felt like the inside of a shipping crate. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all the same unfinished, splintery wood. It was lit by bare, buzzing bulbs hanging at long intervals, casting pools of jaundiced light. The air was still and dust-filled, smelling of linseed oil and neglect.
Leaned against the walls, stacked haphazardly, were hundreds of canvases. Portraits of people with anxious eyes, landscapes twisted in despair, violent abstracts that seemed to suck the light from the bulbs. This was the Man’s collection. Not of joy, but of sorrow, fear, and rage.
“Fuck,” Jan had whispered, her usual humor gone. “He’s not balancing accounts. He’s hoarding negative emotional energy. Building a battery.”
They moved quietly, the only sound their footsteps and Godfrey’s nails on the wood. Then they heard the voices.
Ahead, in a wider intersection, the Man in the Suit stood facing the child-of-anger. The Man had regained his composure, his hands raised in a placating gesture. The child was a contained inferno, crackling silently.
“You are a misunderstanding,” the Man said, his voice echoing slightly. “A valuable one, but a byproduct. You belong here, with the others of your kind. You are powerful. We could use that power.”
The child’s voice was a low furnace blast. “You took me from my mother.”
“I liberated you from a static existence. I can give you purpose. The woman who painted you is fragile, fleeting. She will age. She will die. What will you be then? A forgotten scribble. Here, you could be eternal. A force.”
The child seemed to consider this. The roaring colors of its form slowed, simmering.
Casey, watching from behind a stack of grim still-lifes, felt a scream building in her throat. This thing, born from her wildest, most joyful brushstrokes, was being offered a kingdom of despair.
Mike’s hand found hers in the memory, squeezing tightly.
In the present, his grip was on Jules’s hips, fucking up into her with increasing force as the story reached its peak. Jules was moaning openly now, her head thrown back, her breasts bouncing with the force of their coupling.
“What did it do?” Jules panted, her eyes squeezed shut.
“It asked a question,” Casey said, her own arousal a sharp, coiling tension as she watched them. “Its voice was almost calm. It asked, ‘Will she die alone?’”
The Man in the Suit had smiled, a thin, awful curve of his lips. “All things die alone. It is the nature of things. But here, with me, you would never be alone. You would have a family of similarly liberated emotions.”
The child-of-anger went very still. Then, with a sound like a glacier calving, it spoke.
“Liar.”
The word was not shouted. It was a final verdict.
“You are alone. You surround yourself with the stolen sadness of others because you have nothing of your own. You are a hollow man in a hollow suit. You fear being forgotten more than you fear anything.”
The Man’s smile vanished. A ripple of something ugly—panic, recognition—passed over his face.
The child turned its form, not toward the Man, but seeming to look directly through the stacks of paintings, right at where Casey was hiding. Its voice, when it spoke again, was different. Smaller. A confused ember in the dark.
“Mommy?”
Then it turned back to the Man. “I do not want your kingdom of ghosts.”
It surged forward, not as a wave, but as a spear. It plunged into the Man’s chest.
The Man in the Suit didn’t scream. He gasped, a short, wet intake of breath. His body arched. His eyes widened, fixed on nothing. The child-of-anger didn’t tear him apart. It poured into him, a torrent of rejected, orphaned, and furious emotion flooding a hollow vessel.
The Man’s hands rose to his own head. His fingers clawed at his temples. He began to whisper, then to mutter, a cascading babble of fears, regrets, and isolated sorrows—the voices of every painting in that corridor speaking through him at once. He stumbled back, his elegant composure utterly shattered, weeping with a hundred different kinds of grief.
“He’s gone,” Jan said, her voice flat. “Whatever he was, it’s been overwritten. The kid… fused with him. Filled the emptiness.”
The thing that had been the Man in the Suit looked at its own shaking hands, sobbing quietly with a chorus of voices.
In the therapy office, Mike’s control broke. The image of that hollow man being filled with that toxic ocean of feeling pushed him over the edge. “Oh, fuck, Jules,” he groaned, his thrusts turning jagged and desperate. He emptied himself into her in hot, pumping surges, his body locking tight beneath hers.
Jules cried out, her own climax triggered by his, her inner muscles milking his cock as she shuddered through it. She collapsed onto his chest, spent.
The room was quiet again, save for their ragged breathing. Jules slowly eased off him, a slick trickle of his cum leaking down her thigh. She didn’t reach for a towel. She looked at Casey, whose face was pale.
“The child saved you,” Jules stated. “By destroying him.”
Casey shook her head, a tear finally escaping. “No. It consumed him. It’s still in there. A storm of anger and loneliness wearing a suit.” She wiped at her cheek angrily. “And it still thinks I’m its mother. It proved its love by destroying the monster for me. What does it want now? A thank you? A hug? It’s a fucking nuclear bomb of need.”
Jules reached out, a therapist’s gesture amidst the carnage. “Where is it now?”
Mike answered, his voice tired. “We don’t know. It just… walked away into the backstage darkness. Jan sealed the door behind us, said we needed stronger people. She called her sister.”
Casey met Jules’s gaze, her own eyes wide with a dread that no amount of orgasms could erase. “Brigid is coming. Jan’s kid sister. The powerful one. And she’s bringing Stacy. They’re meeting us at our house in an hour.”
She looked at the clock on the wall. The session was nearly over. Real life, with its unimaginable threats, was waiting.
“We have to go home,” Casey whispered. “Our son is there.”