Her blue eyes were now full of wonder. She shook her head up and down, and the innocence he saw in her stirred the primal need in him to protect her. He pulled her head in and covered her mouth with his. He slowly explored her with his tongue, nipping at her bottom lip until she emitted a tiny whimper that shot straight down to his cock. He had no intention of waiting. He’d told her what he was going to do and he meant it. She was too beautiful, and the weeks of watching her had him feeling like he’d known her all his life. He’d seen intimate parts of her he was certain she’d never shown anyone else. He had seen the real woman, the parts we never share with anyone for fear we’ll be rejected because of our weakness. She wasn’t weak though; she was one of the strongest people he’d ever met. For the first time, this woman had caused a reaction in him that wasn’t just sexual chemistry. He respected her.
Once again, he tossed her over his shoulder, and this time he carried her into his house and up to his master bedroom. He tossed her body down on his bed with ease.
“Don’t fucking move.” He reached his hand in his back pocket and pulled out the knife he had planned on killing her with. He sat over her watching her chest rise and fall. The knife was sharp enough to cut her tee shirt with ease. He folded the torn fabric back revealing her breasts.
“This is the knife I was going to kill you with.” He stabbed the point of it lightly between her third and fourth rib and she jumped.
“Right here, between this third and fourth rib—a stab in, a thrust up, and your little broken heart would be punctured. And. Then. You’d. Die. Now be a good girl and pinch your nipples for me. Do it!”
His tongue ran over his bottom lip as he watched her. It wasn’t just the fact she was touching herself for him that turned him on, it was the blush in her cheeks that did it for him. He placed the knife between his teeth and wiggled her out of her jeans and panties. The blonde patch of hair between her legs gave testimony that she was a natural blonde.
“You’re beautiful, absolutely stunning. I wonder if I’ll be able to let you go when thirty days is up.”
His fingers slid through the folds of her pussy, burying deep inside her. “Spread your fucking legs.” When she didn’t immediately comply, he pinched her inner thigh, twisting until she cried out in pain. “Your screams make my cock hard. Your pain excites me. Come for me, baby. You’re going to need to be wet when I bury this thick cock of mine in you.” He watched her legs quake as an orgasm washed over her.
He tossed the knife on the end table and got up removing his clothes. He flipped her over, pulling her back towards him where he stood at the side of the bed. He spread her open, watching his cock as he buried himself deep into her. When she attempted scrambling away from him, he slapped his hand down on her ass and buried his fingers in her hips.
“Where do you think you’re going? You’ve got thirty days of being my dirty, little toy. Oh, I am going to love using you.” He ground his hips in a circular motion and pulled out, slamming back into her. He could feel her pussy clenching around him as another orgasm raged through her body.
“You haven’t been fucked in forever, girl. You are so damn tight.” He felt like he was exploding in her. Everything in him was being emptied out into her.
He gently pushed her down on the bed and went to the bathroom, returning with a warm washcloth to clean her off. He laid down beside her and looked into her face, petting her hair as he spoke. “You’ve got so much to live for. I’ve got thirty days to convince you.”
He wiped a tear away, and his heart wrenched when her bottom lip trembled. “I know it hurts. I don’t know what it feels like to lose a child, but I do know what pain is. Let me help you.”
“Nobody can help me.”
“Well, I can damn sure try, girl.”
“If you can make the pain go away, I don’t care what you do to me.”
“I’m going to use pain to free you, my love. Now get a good night’s sleep. You’re going to need it.”
He held her that night as if he was protecting a newborn baby. She was his for the next thirty days, and longer than that if he had his way. It was the first time in his life he ever felt the need to hold onto anything so tightly. She had triggered a part of him he was unfamiliar with.
He waited until the rise and fall of her chest was rhythmic, and her breathing was steady, before he drifted off to sleep. For the next thirty days, she would be his primary concern. Her safety and her needs would come before anyone else’s, even his own. He had no way of knowing it would be the first night in five years that she slept through the night with no nightmares. That wouldn’t be the case for him.
“Jericho. Jericho.” The woman’s voice was a gravelly strained whisper due the cancer that ravaged her body. The oxygen did little to ease the strain of taking in air. Basically, his mother was being kept alive by the machines that did what her body should be doing. Truth be told, it was nothing but machines that kept her alive now. He hated himself for wondering why the doctors were prolonging her inevitable meeting with the angel of death. The beautiful, vibrant woman had been reduced to a body that had betrayed her and was slowly decaying.
The hardest thing for him was watching her die a slow death. Why did life have to be so fucking cruel? Why couldn’t she just die with dignity? Her sickness had caused him to be much older in wisdom, as well as pain, than his mere sixteen years would have permitted under normal circumstances.
He willed himself to swallow the bowling ball size of grief that was lodged in his throat—a grief that made his chest tighten with fear.
“Do you know why I named you Jericho?” She gave him no time to answer her rhetorical question. He knew she needed no reply. He would give her the respect of receiving whatever wisdom she could give him before she made her way to meet her maker. “That name means strength; however, I named you Jericho because the moment they laid you on my chest and I looked in your eyes, I saw that wall of reserve you possess within you. I knew you would be the kind of man who would have resolve—that once you made a decision you would stand by it. When the winds of doubt came, you would stand strong. When every structure around you fell, you would remain—like an immovable wall of strength.
“I want to die with dignity, son, not wasting away like this. I need your help.”
The sixteen-year-old boy shook his head back and forth frantically, telling her no with the absence words. The look of horror that she would even ask such a thing was evident in his expression. The last thing he saw before he ran from the hospital room was the frail hand of his mother reaching out to him. The look in his mother’s eyes begged him to help her die.
Tears stung his eyes and blurred his vision as he ran down the hospital hallway. He never noticed the nurses looking over their shoulders in curiosity. It was the first time she’d ask him to relieve her and set her free from the body that not only decayed but betrayed her—holding her in its talons of death as its prisoner. He felt the pain of what his mother went through on a daily basis—and now, as he stepped out into the cool night air, he felt the physical pain that was hers on a daily basis. Just like the woman in the hospital room, breathing was an effort. He gulped, willing himself to take in the life-giving air. He wondered if he could live through this. He knew she wouldn’t. The doctors had tried to prepare him. The sad thing was that no matter how prepared a man’s mind was, nothing, no amount of preparation, could ever prepare the heart for such a devastating loss. No words, no knowledge, no trying to accept the inevitable could ever take away the feeling of the fist in his chest that was sure to leave a hole that could never be healed or filled. Even if he didn’t die with her, there would be a part of him that died that could never be healed, much less resurrected.
Chapter Five
She woke up looking around at the unfamiliar room, and the memories of the night before came crashing down like waves in an angry sea. Had she really been crazy enough to agree to go with a complete stranger for thirty days? She’d tried everything else. As a last-d
itch effort, she was doing the unthinkable—submitting to a complete stranger. She felt like she knew him. An odd sort of feeling came over her that he had been with her before now. Maybe he had been watching over her when she was unaware. Surely he didn’t take on jobs without stalking potential clients.
In the little time she had to study him, it was evident he was a predator by nature. She was playing with fire and for the first time in years she felt alive. It was ironic she was seeking the angel of death to escort her into eternity, and yet, he made her feel alive. He’d been up front about using pain to do it, yet it wasn’t the pain that invigorated her, it was him—a perfect stranger. It was the unknown of being with a very dangerous man—a killer.
She looked up to see him standing and looking at her as if he was studying her meanderings, and she could feel herself blush. She watched, mesmerized, as he made his way in her direction. Something about the look in his eyes was probing, like he knew what she was thinking and she’d better not lie about the question that was coming. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering if you’ve ever done this.”
“Done what? Brought a woman to my home and made her my property?”
“Is that what I am?”
He placed his forefinger beneath her chin and lifted her face, forcing her to look at him. “I’ve never done this. Bringing you here isn’t the challenge—letting you go, that may very well be.”
“And if I still want you to kill me? What then?”
“Then I’ll decide what I’m going to do. One thing I can assure you of: If you die… it will be by my hand. I refuse to have another man commit an act so personal to you. Killing someone is a very personal thing, my love. One I refuse to give to anyone else. There’s an intimacy that comes with killing a person. Even the most brutal of deaths are up close and personal. Sometimes the more brutal they are, the more intimate they become.”
“How did you get into this—killing people?”
Something about the look on his face turned cold, and she knew he’d shut her down.
“You need to be worrying about your own life, not someone else’s. Don’t you think?”
“What life?”
As quickly as the phlegmatic expression had appeared, it was gone. He made his way over to the bed and sat down. He searched her face before he spoke. “Have you ever thought about moving on—about living? You’re still young enough to have a life, to have a family.”
She chuckled, but the contempt was evident, almost as if she was mocking the question. “It isn’t like I have a choice. I’m not purposely trying to hang onto the pain. Every time I think I’ve moved past this, the nightmares intensify. It’s like there’s a part of me that feels guilty about moving on. It’s like letting go is a form of abandoning my daughter.”
“That guilt is keeping you from being set free.”
She looked up at him through long dark lashes. “Don’t you feel guilty about what you do?”
“About assisting people to die in dignity?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “I feel no guilt whatsoever.”
“But what if someone didn’t have a death sentence?”
“I’ve never assisted anyone who wasn’t on death’s doorstep. If there’s any chance they have to live, I don’t take the job. I do this because I have mercy, not because I’m some cold-blooded son of a bitch with no feelings. If I was a killer, I would have killed you—not saved you. It’s the reason I’ll never kill you.”
The shock on her face was evident. “You promised me if I wanted to die after thirty days you’d kill me.”
“I lied—I lied to get you here. You have no idea what you’ve done. Do you?” He shook his head as if he felt sorry for the huge mistake she’d unwittingly made. “There’s a time and a place for everything, and now’s not the time to talk about it.” In his mind, there was no need to tell her that not only was her life in danger—his was too.
Chapter Six
The doctor waited until no one was around before he pulled the folded document from his lab coat. Mildred was the perfect candidate for what he had in mind. She wasn’t the first and she would by no means be the last.
It wasn’t that he was a bad person. It had all started innocently enough. First there were his college loans that had to be paid back. A college education for a surgeon didn’t come cheap. Then, when he got married, they had to keep up appearances for his fellow colleagues and their wives. Later, when his kids came along, he had to pay for private school and all the different interests that came with being in the in crowd. Cheerleading, beauty pageants, soccer, and on and on the list went. Far be it from him to tell his wife that the little darlings wouldn’t use any of it later on in life. It wasn’t worth the lecture he would get about how his children would suffer for his attempt of being frugal. Oh well, there was more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. It wasn’t long before his beloved wife became accustomed to the finer things in life, and she began hemorrhaging finances like one of his patients on the operating table. She acted like there was a fucking tree out back that fruitfully produced hundred dollar bills for all her needs. Needs my ass. He’d even gone so far as thinking about divorce, but keeping her was much cheaper than divorce would be. Yes… life had seen to it that he had to resort to these questionable practices, and with each patient he stole from, it became easier and easier. In the beginning, there had been some guilt, but with each passing year, the mounting bills and rising cost of living made it easier and easier to condone the things he was doing. After all, they were dying anyway, and there were no extended family members to leave their money to, so it really wasn’t wrong—or at least that’s what the good doctor told himself. It wasn’t the stealing that gnawed away at his conscious—it was the killing. That small voice inside his head that whispered to him in the midnight hour was relentless. You’re not God. It isn’t your decision. These aren’t mercy killings. Murderer! Sometimes the booze and pain pills dulled the voice in his head, but no amount of drugs or alcohol would ever silence them. He’d conquered any heartfelt guilt long ago—but those damn voices in his head couldn’t be muted. Some days, they were so loud he felt like he was losing his mind. It used to be that they only came in the dark hours, robbing him of his sleep. Now, they continued to rob him of sleep, but when sleep finally did come, they accused him with nightmares. He wondered how long it would be before they took over his daylight hours as well. It wasn’t the hereafter or meeting his maker that scared him, it was the thought of getting caught. He wasn’t the type of man who could survive prison. He’d heard the horror stories of rape and torment that went on behind bars. He’d thought about suicide, but he was too big of a coward for that. If he ever did get caught and sentenced, then, and only then, would he pull the trigger. It would be better than being someone’s bitch. Then, there was that whole thing of not getting life insurance when a person committed suicide. Even though a part of him resented his wife and kids for using him as their cash cow, he cared enough about them to not want to leave them penniless. No… this was the only way.
Life hadn’t been what he imagined it would be. For a man who looked like he had everything to the outside world, he sure was miserable.
He watched as the old woman’s eyes fluttered open and resisted the urge to flinch when her cold hand touched his. Her blood runs cold. She’s dying anyway. Just fucking do it already.
“You brought the medical papers for me to sign—so sweet of you. I so enjoy your visits. Not many doctors nowadays take the time to be so caring and personal with their patients.” Killer. Liar. Thief. “I don’t have my glasses. Just show me where to sign.” Liar. Thief.
He quickly handed her a pen and showed her where to sign before he cowered out.
Her feeble hand shook, signing the document with a shaky scrawl that looked more like chicken scratch than the signature of a wealthy woman who had all intentions of leaving her worldly goods to various ministers.
In his mind, they were bigger crooks than he
ever thought about being. She had shared her intentions with him, and he in turn justified what he was doing with the knowledge she’d entrusted him with. Do no harm. Yes… the voices were gaining strength with each passing day. The funny thing about truth is… no matter how we lie to justify our actions, the voice of truth cannot be silenced. If you question your own motives—more than likely they need to be examined. But, Doctor Jackson did what he always did. He justified the means to an end—even though the only person profiting from those means was him and his greedy little, spoiled ass family. Fuck the truth. I need money.
She had no way of knowing she’d just given him the only thing that kept her alive up to this point. Now that he had what he wanted, her fate was sealed.
He stood as if he was going to adjust her pillow, and in one rapid move, before he could change his mind, he pressed it over her nose and mouth. He hoped there would be no petechial hemorrhaging. He was using a method he termed soft suffocation where he barely pressed down. The fact she was weak would work in his favor, and the fact that she’d been diagnosed with breathing issues would make the kill look like a natural death. Even if her bloodshot eyes did raise suspicion, no one would question the good doctor. After all… he’d taken the Hippocratic Oath. Doctors like him were seen as gods, and if Dr. Jackson was good at any one thing, it was playing God.
Chapter Seven
The ring of Jericho’s phone pulled him from his thoughts. He looked around where he was seated at his desk, and when he was assured Angel was still resting in the master bedroom, he put the phone on speaker.
“There’s been another one,” the familiar voice said on the other end of the line.
“He’s escalating.”
“You need to send her in.”
“I don’t know if she’s ready for that—not to mention it means me revealing my true identity.”
Angel of Death Page 2
