Stolen Redemption

by Michel Prince

  “If you don’t let me go to the hospital I’ll have permanent scars,” Eliza said as she touched her swollen cheekbone. I’d taped the skin back together the best I could with butterfly bandages. “I hate being vain, but at times it is all I have. You understand that.”

  “Are you saying I’m attractive?”

  “You know you are. That is how you have all these women around you. Pulled in first by your looks, then what? A silver tongue.”

  “My tongue is but one of my talented appendages.”

  I wiped the blood off of Eliza’s arm as I placed the final bandage. Twelve in all. Turning her hand upside down I traced the inner cupping. What joys she could hold in that little palm. Kissing the center, I looked in her gray eyes.

  “What is next for my princess?” I asked, and Eliza’s cheeks flushed. She shook her head.

  “LaDressa, right, she’s royalty…um…I gave her more morphine than I would a horse, so she should be out for about thirty minutes from what I’ve seen.” She checked her watch, then adjusted in the seat. “Strike that, let’s say fifteen.”

  “Damn,” I said, trailing my finger down her bruised cheek, then stroking her bottom lip with my thumb. “Guess you’ll be the only one to climax this time.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Admit it,” I purred and pulled her onto my lap. With her legs straddling my hardness the fatigue she’d been feigning dissipated. “Between fear and loathing you’ve been imagining riding my face.”

  Instantly her lips were on mine as she tangled her fingers in my hair. With a hard tug she yanked my head back and licked from the notch of my neck to my jaw. Once again her tongue danced in my mouth and I sucked hard on the strong muscle. Her sex began rubbing against mine. The soft fabric on my pants became wet from her as my shaft screamed to be inside her, but if her calculations were correct I would get only a few good strokes before Masako came busting in complaining of LaDressa’s pain.

  Instead I’d have to enjoy the feel of Eliza riding me faster and faster. Strokes pulled on the skin of my cock as I walked the line of pain and pleasure and what was better in the world?

  Wetness drenched my pants as I drove my tongue into her mouth and I loosened her hair from its binder. Blonde locks covered my face as her violent need matched mine. Hunger drove us to fall back as the legs of the chair gave out and we collapsed to the floor.

  Panting, Eliza finally broke our embrace as blood dripped down her cheek. Instantly I licked the liquid and enjoyed the salty flavor. My energy surged. I was never one to drink blood, but Eliza’s caused my muscles to harden and I flipped her on her back.

  “Pivane,” Masako screeched, sending a lightning bolt up my spine. “She needs you.”

  Desire swirled in Eliza’s eyes and my loyalties were torn. My first inclination was to satisfy my dick over any royal brat, but if I were to ever get more pussy, I’d have to help her royal pain in my ass.

  With a flushed face, wet cunt, and panting to the point of hyperventilating Eliza’s eyes devoured my body. I was a bit disappointed to leave her spent on the floor. Damn, I hadn’t even satisfied her. Well, wasn’t that my fucking modus operandi?

  LaDressa sat up on the bed. Pillows surrounded her in a number I thought impossible. Her eyes were hooded as she came out of her stupor.

  “Where is the physician?” she asked.

  “Spread eagle in the bathroom waiting for my return.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorjamb. “You want first dibs?”

  “Bring her here. She needs to check my legs.” The princess looked down at the makeshift splints we’d made from pieces of two by four I had in the currently destroyed house. “I believe they are healed.”

  “She won’t.”

  “I do not care what she understands. Her job is to clear me to walk again.”

  “You planning on attacking her again?”

  LaDressa rolled her eyes and waved her hand as if that were a notification for me to leave.

  “I need to know you won’t hurt her.”

  “Why? Have you formed some sort of attachment?”

  “Not yet,” I acquiesced. “But one or two good strokes and I fear she’ll be permanently affixed to my cock.”

  The princess glowered and I knew her true desire was to taste my cum, but she couldn’t give in as blatantly as I do. Not in front of her handmaiden, who still believed in the falsity of her love of Damarion. Something told me if she let me spend fifteen minutes between her thighs we could end up being good friends.

  Leaving the room I smirked at Masako and returned to the bathroom. Eliza braced herself on the sink with trembling arms I feared would give way at any minute. Her lips were still swollen from our interaction as she stood with her right leg twisted behind her left.

  “Your patient is requesting you clear her to walk.”

  “It takes six weeks for bones to heal minimum. With my crude splinting try six months.”

  “I’d love to keep you here that long,” I whispered against her neck as I held onto her trim hips, making sure my cock brushed against her ass cheeks. The sensation caused her skin to erupt with gooseflesh and she shuddered as if I’d stolen her breath. “Lie to her, tell her she needs to heal longer and I’ll find a way to finish what we started.”

  The desire wafted off her. How long had it been for the dear sweet doctor? Months, years…had she kept a singular focus, forgetting the pleasures of the flesh? I nipped lightly on her earlobe and a light moan drifted from her center up to her lips. The sound left ripples against her body and mine. She’d be mine the right way before the night was over.

  * * * *

  Detective Vincent DeTello

  Esther’s eyes were wide and searching like a frightened animal. She’d been cut recently. Not physically, but whatever Kiriana had done cut into Esther’s soul. The first thing I needed to figure out was who and what she really was. This insane idea that she was Pastor Jebediah Benson’s daughter couldn’t be true. She’d have to be in her sixties.

  “Let’s just pull up the history of the New Life Ascendency and we’ll go from there.” I patted her hand and felt a bit dirty about the thoughts circling my mind. Here she was asking for help and I was pushing back thoughts of tasting her lips.

  “I’ll have Zarmina bring us a computer.”

  Esther left the room and returned five minutes later with a beautiful Arabian woman. Did they only let attractive women in here? I guess they’d have to. Zarmina had her dark hair pulled up in a chignon with soft curls framing her face. But it was her eyes that caught me. Emerald green with as much shine as Esther’s vivid violet eyes.

  “You’re awake and moving,” her singsong voice said as she pushed up the sleeves of her oversized taupe sweater. “That is so good. Most humans don’t heal this quickly. Must be Gabriel’s healing hands. Do you have full range of motion yet?”

  “No…sadly, I wish I did.” I rolled my shoulder forward and I might as well of been winding a rusted watch. “I should contact my office.”

  “What?” Esther asked as she and Zarmina shared worried looks.

  “That should be fine. Just calling in ill?” Zarmina said as she pulled out a phone from the back pocket of her jeans and passed it to me.

  “Zarmina, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I ask how long have you been a part of this?”

  “A hundred years.”

  “Immortality is part of the deal then?”

  “Sadly, yes.” She sighed. “My Other will never work off his sentence.”

  “Other?”

  “Husband,” Esther corrected and held out a laptop. “We don’t use the normal vernacular. Here, find the information you were looking for.”

  Taking the computer with my right hand at first I quickly brought my left hand up to handle the weight.

  “He will need more work,” Zarmina declared. “I shall have Kiriana call for Gabriel.”

  With that she
left and Esther sat at the end of the bed. I shifted and slid back on the bed that still had the back raised. I patted the empty spot next to me and Esther meekly came to sit by my side. The heat from her body seemed to dull the ache in my joints.

  “This is so regal.”

  “Regal?”

  “To sit up in a comfortable bed next to a man…maybe regal isn’t the word. Decadent or…” She blushed and covered her face.

  My hand reached for hers and I brought it to rest on my leg. Then I opened the laptop. Humming to life, the laptop seemed new. No excess icons cluttered the home screen. I found the internet browser and it opened a search engine. Typing in the name of the church brought up over a million websites. I clicked on one with live video from the Documentary Channel.

  “Today the pastor of the New Life Ascendency took not only his life, but the lives of nearly two hundred of his followers that lived here forty miles north of Miles City, Montana.” The national reporter continued to tell the story of the FBI search that was unsuccessful because Pastor Benson had denied access. “Seven years ago, Pastor Benson was suspected in the apparent suicide of his eldest daughter Esther Benson…”

  I clicked pause and turned my head sharply toward Esther who sat solemnly as she looked at the family picture of the Bensons. The sweet farm girl in the rough muslin gown standing in the back row of the family had to be Esther’s twin. Or her mother…but the girl in the picture couldn’t have been her mother because she’d killed herself in nineteen seventy-six.

  “What are you, Esther?”

  “I’m a member of the Frozen,” she replied robotically, still staring at the screen. “A chosen few given a chance for absolution after committing the sin of suicide.”

  “The demons are real?” I asked even though at this point I had to concede there was no other explanation. Somehow the things going bump in the night weren’t a tree branch against the window.

  “Very.” Her finger absently traced the outline of her mother on the picture. “I did it for her.”

  “Your mother wanted you to die?”

  “I’m not sure. My father commanded it. I’m sure she would have ended my life if I hadn’t had the strength to pull the trigger.”

  “Were you ill? Why would your father want you dead?”

  “I was built for sin. There was no other reason for me to look the way I do.”

  “Being beautiful is not a sin.” Her skin was fresh and pure. Devoid of blemishes. My hand wrapped around her wrist where small cuts peppered her skin. “No matter your outward appearance the beauty inside you radiates and calls to people.”

  Her eyes finally broke from the screen and she looked at me.

  “And you desire me,” she observed. Maybe to her any attraction was a sin.

  “Your father desired you, didn’t he?”

  “The devil sent me to him as a test. He, like Abraham, knew what to do.”

  Gabriel entered the room and Esther jumped up from the bed like a match had been lit under her. Was he the Gabriel? At least six-four, he filled the room with his presence. Shoulder-length brown hair and eyes an empty gray made me wonder what I had gotten caught up in.

  “I was summoned,” he stated plainly.

  “His shoulder has yet to heal fully,” Esther exclaimed. She must still be in the nervous teenager mode.

  “Ah, huh…” Gabriel nodded, then walked to the other side of the bed.

  He placed his hand on my exposed shoulder. I winced at the heat he emanated, but was unable to move away. Instead I had to endure the flames licking my joints as I clutched the bed sheet with my good hand and fought back the urge to have my second pussy scream in an hour. Remembering bad movies I attempted Lamaze breathing only to have Esther’s eyes widen in fear.

  “I’m fine.” I gritted my teeth as I slammed my head back against the bed. “Just fine.”

  As suddenly as the heat began it dulled and Gabriel released me.

  “Call me back in two hours. He’ll need the time to rest before I can perform anymore healing on him.”

  “Are you an archangel?” I gasped, trying to focus on learning as much as I could.

  Gabriel’s eyebrows arched as he crossed his arms and looked from Esther and back again. Cold crept through the air like a fog rolling into a valley and I understood I’d crossed a line. Stiffening my back caused a spasm I had to fight against to stand my ground. He obviously wasn’t Mr. Miyagi with a whole “wax on, wax off” routine. The idea I wasn’t in the realm of humans was closing in around me.

  Esther stepped toward me as if she was getting ready to block any action taken by Gabriel. My heart began to race and I was unsure if it would stay in my chest. Cold bit at my skin and the world became hazy.

  “What do you think?” Gabriel asked.

  Chapter 9

  Esther Benson

  “VINCENT,” I called as I shook him and turned to Gabriel. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing, my dear. You, on the other hand, dropped the temperature about sixty degrees. Probably not the healthiest thing even with his fever.”

  “Why must you scare humans? I know your power and—”

  “Did I unfurl my wings? Did I bring down a heavenly chorus? Did I blow my horn and call him home?” Gabriel breathed and calmed himself with one of Kiriana’s patented cleansing methods. “No, I asked an opinion.”

  “I enjoyed your presence more before you met your family.”

  “You think Kiriana has rubbed off on me?”

  “I think you all feel as if the world were a joke here for your amusement.” I stroked Vincent’s face, but still he did not awaken. “He is but a man.”

  “And you a woman.”

  “I am one of your servants, my Lord, but I cannot serve you when you are who harms what I am here to protect.”

  “I shall take my leave of you, dear Esther. His heart still beats, take peace in that.”

  Vincent’s pallor had me worried. I was unsure if it was from Gabriel’s confession or the pain of the rapid healing. His face was no longer dark olive. Instead his complexion was a shade darker than the white sheets. I didn’t know what to do. Medical knowledge had never been my strong suit in the first place and now all I knew were the ways to cure a Frozen, not a human.

  His eyes fluttered and for the first time since he passed out my heart beat. I hadn’t noticed its absence. Rolling his head from side to side Vince struggled against the weight of his own eyelids until they opened by a fraction and we made eye contact.

  “I need to call in,” he coughed as he regained his senses.

  “That’s your first thought?”

  “It was the only thing my brain could focus on long enough. Reaching for more hurts.”

  “Right, we did get distracted by the research.” I picked up the phone Zarmina had left at the end of the bed and passed it to him.

  “Yeah, it’s DeTello,” he spoke into the phone. “I’m going to do some work from home. I pulled a muscle and can barely walk…yeah, the chiro’s getting me in this afternoon…well, I believe in them…anyway, make sure anything important goes to my email and I’ll keep going.”

  He looked at me then ran his finger over the mouse pad on the computer. “Could you do me a favor? In my top drawer is a slip of paper…I know there’s a lot of slips…this one has an ad for Paulette’s Pizza in Chicago…good, can you read me what I wrote…yes, it doesn’t make sense to you because it’s my note…uh-huh…thanks…no, don’t throw it away, just put it away…yeah, let the chief know. I’ll check in later after my appointment…What? Why didn’t you say that first? How long? No, you were right to take the information. She fits the profile…I’ll try to get out and look into it.”

  Vince tossed the phone on the bed and went back to the computer. He typed for a few minutes, then rotated his shoulder as if he was testing it out. His eyes stayed locked on his computer.

  “Vincent?” I asked, confused.

  “Esther,
I need some time to process. The best way I can do that is to work on a case.” He pulled in his lip then rubbed his left eye. “I’m praying your world isn’t a part of it anymore. Sadly now I don’t know.”

  “The missing girls.”

  “And Damarion Juarez.”

  “He’s not involved with them.”

  “How do you know?”

  I rocked back on my heels and crossed my arms around me so I could hold myself tight.

  “Because up until a few weeks ago he was dead.”

  “He was dead?” Vincent dropped his head back. “Is he a member of the Frozen?”

  “Heavens, no. He’s the leader of the demons. At least in this area. Or he was until—”

  Vincent looked at me and I wasn’t sure what I’d done.

  “Esther, until what?”

  “Until Kiriana and Nye killed him.”

  “So they murdered him.”

  “No, he’s a demon. You can’t murder a demon. They need to die or…he’s not human.”

  “You said he was dead…did Gabriel resurrect him?”

  “No, Kiriana and two demons did. Gabriel’s out of the loop on that one.”

  “Esther, where is Damarion Juarez?” he asked firmly.

  “Locked away. He’s dangerous.”

  “And the woman claiming to be his sister?”

  “I’d assume she’s one of the Deumos.”

  A beep sounded on the computer and Vincent breathed in and refocused on the laptop. His fingers scrolled through the data in front of him. A frown came across his face and he snapped the screen shut.

  “Bring me to Damarion Juarez and make sure Kiriana’s there too.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good—” His hand wrapped around my wrist. Heat scorched my skin from where he touched even though gooseflesh covered me and shivers travelled down my spine.