Destiny's Gamble

Web Of Thoughts

A/N: I read all your comments and private messages about how I don't update twice in a day, or more than that. And I thought, well, my lovely readers deserve better than that. So viola! A double update. Are ya'll happy now? ;) Happy reading xx 

Manik's POV

"Up," I instruct. "Up, we go." I wrap my hands around Angel's petite wrists, trying to hoist her upwards, and onto her feet. But the second I manage to get her ass off the floor she lands right back onto it, giggles constantly leaving her lips. "If you don't get off your ass soon, it will bear bruises from you constantly landing back down on it. As far as I know yours isn't plastic and that means there's nothing protecting it." 

"Who puts plastic in their behind?" Angel asks, looking up at me through squinted eyes, as she tilts her head to the side. Pouting, she glances over her shoulder and towards her ass. 

"Angel, get the fuck off the floor. Now!" My voice booms across the empty house. It does the job though, because in the next second she's scrambling to her feet. "Good girl." I pat her on the head, as she glares at me, her hair sticking out in ten different directions from her now ruined ponytail. 

If yelling is what will get the job done throughout tonight, then by tomorrow I will have a soar throat. What shall I do next? I've always chased the high, but never tried to get it off my head. So how should I get Angel back to Earth? 

"Okay," I say, huffing, as I rub my palms together. I turn around, trying to think of something that will help take the effect of the pot off. Maybe milk. If it works for alcohol then it will surely work for this, right? "Now I have a plan, but for it to work you need to cooperate..." I trail off, as I turn around and realize that I'm talking to myself. 

Shutting my eyes, I take a deep breath, my palms balling into fists at my sides. Oh, this woman tests all of my boundaries. I chase the feeling of being in control and I am ninety-nine percent of the time. I always have everything in my grasp, until the situation involves Angel. With her I never know what to expect next, which way she'll turn and how she'll drag me along with her. Angel chucks curve ball after curve ball my way and all I can do is take it one step at a time. The thought infuriates me and yet, it excites me. 

There aren't many people in this world who can hold their head high with pride and claim that they've managed to take me by surprise, or keep me on my toes. And as much as I despise that feeling there's also a certain part of me which revels in it. It's one of the reasons why Angel's so special. I just wish things didn't have to be this way, in which she and I are at such bad terms with each other.  

Alas, I can't bring myself to forgive her for what she did. A clattering sound causes my eyes to fly open. Good Lord, what has this woman done now? 

"Angel!" I yell, stalking out of the kitchen. "I swear the second I grab hold of you, you're going to regret the day you were born." 

I push open the lounge door, my eyes searching for any signs of the mad woman in there. She's not here. After checking all the rooms on the first floor, I bound up the staircase. Angel is standing with her back towards my door, staring at the floor. Her shoulder length hair is acting as a curtain, framing both sides of her round face. 

She's wearing a white, off the shoulder top. I just now realize that the front of her outfit is drenched with water, thereby making it utterly see through. Whoever is up there, controlling the reins of this universe, is truly out on a mission to test me tonight. 

"You need to change," I announce, marching towards Angel. "Now!" She's still staring down at the floor, her bottom lip jutting out. Frowning, my gaze follows her line of sight only to find a crimson liquid spreading out from underneath the sole of her right foot.

"What happened?" I bolt towards where Angel's standing, sinking to my knees in front of her. Broken pieces of glass are lying behind her heels. Fuck, she knocked down the vase that was lying beside my room door. "Don't move." I cup my right hand around the back of her injured foot, slowly bringing it towards my lap. 

"Put your hand on my shoulder for balance," I instruct. I peer down at her sole, my heart racing with worry for her. A piece of glass is jammed into the middle of her foot, streams of blood running down the length of it. "Do you know that you're the world's biggest fucker?" I turn my head upwards to look at her. Just as I do so a drop of water falls onto my forehead. 

Angel's watching me, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. Now usually when women cry, I like to run a hundred miles away from them. But when Angel cries, all I want to do is reach out to her and wrap her in my arms. 

She doesn't say anything, as more tears escape from her slender eyes. Angel sniffles, casting her gaze away from mine and towards the side. She's in so much pain and yet she doesn't want to complain about it. What is this woman made of? 

"I'm going to place your foot back on the floor, okay?" I say, gently easing it off my lap. "But you need to put all the pressure on your heel and keep it off the base of your foot. Am I making myself very clear to you?" She nods, her eyes still staring at a spot to the side. "Good," I murmur, as I do exactly as I've told her. 

Once I've placed her foot back down and I know she's balanced, I stand up and reach over from her side to my room door's handle. Pressing it down, I push the door open. I cup the back of her knees with my left arm, as I snake my right one behind her back. 

"Come to my room and I'll fix your wound." I say, not giving her much of a choice, as I hoist her into my arms and carry her into my room. 

This place of mine - my room - is a personal haven for me. I dislike anyone coming in here, including my domestic staff. Hell, they're not even allowed to clean my room. I doubt even my closest friends, such as Cabir, have seen this place. Because it's a spot in which I am allowed to properly retreat into my world, one in which only my thoughts exist. Heck, I hadn't even planned to bring Alya into this room. I had intended to move in with her into the bedroom next to mine. The one which is Angel's now. 

This is the only place so far in which I have been able to get any writing done at all.But I also have a rule: what happens in my room stays in my room. There's no way I would allow myself to take my writing pad out of the four walls of this place. There's no way I'd share with others what my mind conjures up when I'm in here. Except with Angel, of course. I still remember that night in the hospital, when I allowed the dam of thoughts in me to overflow into her ears. I wanted her to know the things that make me who I am and for once in my life I wanted somebody to witness me as not a Devil. But the opposite of that. 

The days to follow, when she didn't show up again, or seem to care, I wondered as to why I yearned to bear my naked flesh to her that night. What makes her so special, was the one question that tossed itself over and over in my head. Till today it bothers me, more so than it should. She's the one constant in my head, and as much as I'd like to deny it, Angel often hovers in my heart too. 

It's not a pleasant feeling at all. No, it feels like an ant's crawling all over my skin, but every time I try to aim and kill it, I always end up hitting the wrong spot. A fire ant, that's what she is. But I can't help but wonder that if she hadn't deceived me that night, would I have felt this way about her? 

Had matters unfolded in a different manner, would I have taken pleasantly to this feeling? Something tells me that, yes, I would've. But that's just it, now is too late to turn back time. Angel is just like all the other Devils in my life. She is a deceitful, cunning, money hungry woman. The only thing that continuously irks me is, how could I have gone so wrong in judging her? And why did I allow myself to put such blind faith in her? 

Why didn't the guards of my head - the ones which keep the world away from me - wage a war against her and keep her out as well? How was it so easy for her to bypass security and infiltrate my being?