by Measha Stone
REDEMPTION
Copyright © Measha Stone 2018 All rights Reserved
Editing and Proofreading by Wizards in Publishing
Ebook Edition
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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, actual events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters and names are products of the author’s imagination and used factitiously.
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Redemption
A Christmas Romance
Measha Stone
Black Heart Publications
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Also by Measha Stone
BEAST
One
Three chardonnays in, Celeste’s head swam. Music continued to play overhead in the bar, but she’d long ago stopped paying attention to it. She had another focus.
Her job.
Or rather, the impending loss of it.
Sam, the bartender, showed up with the bottle ready to pour another glass. She waved him on; one more then she’d slink into a cab and head home. It wouldn’t be proper to show up late to your own firing.
“She’s had enough I think. Thanks.” A masculine hand covered her glass. The bartender watched for her reaction. She was the paying customer, after all.
Celeste followed the hand up the arm it was attached to until she found the owner.
Fuck.
Gorgeous, in a ride ‘em rough sort of way. Dark stubble covered his tense jaw, and his dark amber eyes captivated her attention. He wore a leather jacket, but she could see a tattoo snaking out from beneath his sleeve and over his hand. The hand keeping her from another drink.
“I’m good, thanks.” She waved a hand and flashed a grin at Mr. Handsome then turned to Sam. “One more, please.”
“She’s done,” he dictated in a low, firm voice that normally would piss her off, but in her somewhat inebriated state made her panties a bit damper. He snatched up the empty wine glass and handed it back to the bartender. “Does she have a tab open?”
“No, she paid as she went.” Sam ignored her shocked expression and just carried on having a conversation with the overbearing stranger on a mission to kill her buzz.
“What is your problem?” Celeste slapped the top of the bar.
The stranger leaned closer to her. His fingers brushed the hair from her ear, and his hot, peppermint-scented, breath washed over the side of her face. “I don’t have a problem, Celeste. But if you continue to argue with me here, you will have a very big problem.”
She jerked away from him, searching his face. She’d never seen him before, right? Could he have been a one-night stand she didn’t remember?
“How do you know my name?” She blinked a few times, trying to push away the light fog the wine had brought in.
He grinned. Not a sexy come-hither grin, but a sinister, knowing quirk of his lips. This man wasn’t the usual pickup guy; this man was dangerous.
She grabbed her phone from the bar and shoved it into her jeans. Scooting off her stool, she yanked her coat on and wiggled around him, though he didn’t give her much room to move.
“You’re right. I’ve had enough to drink. I’m just gonna head home.” She started to walk away, but his hand landed on her shoulder, pulling her back to him. She yelped, looking around to see if anyone had seen him and would come to her aid. But everyone in the bar was busy with their own conversation, or pool game, or walking straight toward her and not seeing her.
What the fuck?
“They can’t see us anymore, Celeste. You looked ready to give me a fight, and I don’t want to involve any of these people. None of them are on the naughty list.” His voice, savage and raw, cut through what buzz she had, sending an electric shiver through her.
“What does that mean? Who are you?” She yanked away from his grip and spun around again. “And why the fuck do you smell like spiced peppermint?” She didn’t mind the scent, especially three days before Christmas. It sort of fit the season, but the man looked like he should smell like leather and sweat. Not something as warm and inviting as peppermint.
That grin of his widened. “It’s pretty much burned into my clothes and skin at this point. Job hazard.”
“Job hazard?” she growled. “I want to know what’s going on right now, or I’m calling the police.” She yanked out her phone to show him how serious she was. She hated cops, and they weren’t happy with her most of the time either, but she would use them against this guy if needed.
He laughed, a deep-rooted sound a hell of lot less cheery than the way he smelled.
“Your phone isn’t working either, Celeste. Now, if you’d just stop fighting me, I can explain.”
She swiped her finger over the screen. He had to be bullshitting. How could he stop her phone from working? Or make the people in the bar not notice them?
Nothing happened.
Swiping harder, she tried again.
Still nothing.
“What did you do?” she yelled at him. Gorgeous or not, this guy had worn out his welcome.
His smile faded away, and that darkness came back.
“My name is Adam. I’m the guy in charge of helping those people Santa deems to have potential to see the errors of their ways and get them on the correct path in time for Christmas morning. He chooses three people from the naughty list, and you, Celeste, were chosen.”
Celeste stumbled back a step. He was deranged. A completely insane person who’d wandered into the bar and was harassing her. Except, no one around them seemed to notice.
“Hey! Someone! Anyone!” she screamed at the other people milling around the bar. No one flinched. Not a single head turned in her direction.
“I told you, they can’t see or hear us,” he said in a bored tone.
“You’re not here.” She shook her head, as though she could clear him from it. “You’re not here. I had too much to drink, and I’m having one fucked up dream right now. That’s what happened. So, I’m just going to leave and go home. Once I get there, I’ll wake up.” She didn’t look at him again. Maybe if she didn’t acknowledge his presence, her mind would finally get in line and make him disappear.
He heaved a heavy sigh. “Celeste. We don’t have much time. Three days, that’s all you’re allotted, and we have a lot of work to do to get you on the right path.”
She started laughing. Maybe she was the one who’d gone insane.
“Because I’m on the naughty list, but Santa thinks I can change?” she asked, still not looking at him.
“Yes. If I have to keep repeating myself, this is going to take a long time. And you have a lot of work to do.”
“You already said that. But there’s one problem, one little issue with your plan.” She pulled her gaze up from his boots to his eyes, meeting him head on. She had him now. She would snap out of whatever dream she was in once she spo
ke the truth. He’d have no choice but to poof back out of her life the same way he’d jumped in.
“What’s that?” he asked, folding his arms over his too broad chest. If she hadn’t seen him smile earlier, she wouldn’t have recognized it, but a little grin played on his lips.
“There is no such thing as Santa Clause.”
There.
She’d said it, and now he’d have to leave.
The smile, what little of it there was, fell. He grabbed a phone from his coat and quickly tapped away on the screen. That was fine, she’d wait. Any second now, he’d vanish, and she could wake up.
Seeming pleased with what he saw on his screen, he put it away and lifted his hand in front of her face.
“That was exactly the wrong answer, Celeste. But that’s fine. You just made my job a hell of a lot more fun.”
With a snap of his fingers, everything went dark.
Two
Obviously, it was a lot to take in. Adam wouldn’t deny that. Learning you were on the naughty list and now had to pay for your misdeeds. Not just pay for them but learn and grow from them was a lot to ask of a person. He knew that. And he knew it was going to be hard.
But Celeste was more stubborn than anyone he’d seen in a while. And then when she uttered those words—spit out that fucking blasphemous lie, she had helped him get the green light to do things his way.
The big man didn’t always approve of his methods, but on the hard cases, he gave him carte blanche. And Celeste had shown herself to be a hard case. Not just because she didn’t immediately accept his authority over her, but through her unwillingness to understand there were greater powers at work than she could see.
He wasn’t worried. She’d break.
After he shrugged out of his leather jacket and checked the temperature in the attached stable, he grabbed himself a beer. He’d give her another hour to settle down before he went to her.
From all the screaming and kicking he could hear, she needed a little more time to understand her situation. Once she wore herself down a bit, she’d be easier to deal with. He didn’t want her depleting all her strength, though. She would need it for what he had planned for her.
Opening her file, he re-read her transgressions. His little Celeste was quite the dishonest woman. Opening and maxing out a credit card in her mother’s name. Hacking into the payroll department’s server at the advertising firm where she held a reception job and diverting portions of paychecks into an offshore account for herself. These weren’t even the worst of her offenses. She played a game with people’s lives, using them for her own gain and disregarding them once they no longer served her purpose.
He tsked and turned to the portion of her file that delved into her love life.
Well, in her case, sex life.
She’d never once fallen in love. Not that he could see in the records, anyway. All her boyfriends were more fucktoys than people to her.
There had to be a reason. Something in her past, maybe. What made her so against love that she would barricade herself from it? That concerned him more than her dishonesty and theft. Those would be dealt with first, though.
Easy punishments for those transgressions. But teaching her to trust, to come to depend on others and not hide behind her own selfishness would be harder. And he only had two more days.
If she didn’t come around by Christmas morning, she’d be a permanent resident on the naughty list. And once permanently engraved on that list, she’d never find true happiness in her life. She’d be forever empty.
Clenching his jaw, he slammed the file shut and tossed it onto the coffee table. He had two days left, and he’d make the most of them. Her training would begin right after her first punishment to clean the slate of her theft and lies.
Her training would involve everything she loved and hated about herself, and she’d learn to trust him to give her what she needed.
Whatever happened after that, wasn’t really his business.
He would need to remind himself of that because, since he’d put his eyes on Celeste at the bar, his body had hummed with need.
After he finished his beer, he tossed the bottle in the bin and headed to the stable. Enough time had passed. If he let her keep kicking the walls the way she was, she’d hurt herself. And they didn’t have time to let her self-inflicted wounds heal before she started her training.
“Let me out!” He heard her scream more clearly when he opened the door to the stable. It held only a single stall, and he kept the place warm enough he didn’t have to worry about her catching a chill.
“Celeste.” He walked up to the wooden gate of her stall, where she faced him with a flushed face, wild eyes, and messy hair. She had small lacerations on her calves, probably from all the kicking and throwing herself against the gate.
“You!” She ran at him, arms outstretched, ready to hurt him. He took a step back, safely out of her reach as she ran into the gate. “Who the fuck are you? Why am I here?” she yelled, gasping for breath. Her chest heaved.
“I already told you all of that,” he said, moving closer to the stall.
“None of this makes any fucking sense!”
“Watch your language and your tone, Celeste,” he snapped at her. “You’re supposed to be trying to get off the naughty list, not put on it.”
She shook her head and stumbled back a few steps before sinking to the floor. The hay had been fresh when he filled the stall before collecting her, anticipating how much trouble she would be, but with all her kicking, she’d made a mess of it. Hay stuck in her hair, and blotches of dirt marred her breasts and ass.
Stripping her hadn’t been hard, a snap of his fingers really, He would have enjoyed tearing the fabric from her body much more, but she wasn’t in the condition to have it done the way he wanted. He’d punish for that, too.
“I just want to go home,” she said softly.
He stepped back to the gate.
“And you will. In two days. You have until Christmas morning to pay for your misdeeds and to learn from them. If you do that, I’ll return you home on Christmas morning.”
She pulled her knees up to her chin and hugged them.
“How can any of this be real?” she asked.
“It is. That’s all you really need to accept right now.” He unlocked the gate and entered her stall. The invisible barrier still held; even if she tried to run out she couldn’t.
“Can I at least have my clothes back?” she asked, looking up at him with innocent eyes. He shook his head; she was still playacting.
“No.” He walked over to the back of the stall where iron rings hung from the wall. “Come here, Celeste.” He crooked a finger at her.
She sighed. “Why? What are those for?”
“Because you’re going to have your first punishment now.”
Three
Celeste didn’t respond to his absurd statement. How could she? What was there to say to something so crazy?
“Celeste. The longer it takes you to obey me, the harder this gets for you.” He lifted a leather cuff dangling from the thick iron rings.
She nodded, a small movement. Moving to her feet, she kept her eyes on him, making sure his attention was focused on her. Then she bolted.
She ran straight for the open gate. Hitting something hard, she bounced backward and fell onto her ass.
“Fuck!” she screamed and rubbed her nose that had made impact first against whatever the hell was keeping her locked in the fucking stall. A stall! With hay! Like she was some animal!
He sighed again. “Fine, we’ll do this your way.” He was at her side in three strides and had her up and hauled to the back wall.
She fought him, clawing at his hands, but he didn’t seem to feel anything. Screaming at him didn’t faze him either, He simply continued to work her wrists into the leather cuffs.
“Adam! Please!” She yanked on the restraints. No give at all. She was stuck. Not only in the stall but now to the wall. Before she could at leas
t look around, see over the gate at the stable, but now all she could see was the damn wall. “Can’t I at least turn around?” she asked in a calmer voice. Hysterics didn’t work, and she needed to get on his good side if she was going to find a way to give him the slip.
“I’d have a hard time strapping your ass if you were facing the other way.”
His boots sounded heavy in the stall. He kicked away some of the hay, but she couldn’t see him well from over her shoulder.
“Strap me?” She couldn’t have heard him correctly. “No. You can’t.”
She heard the unmistakable sound of his belt buckle being undone, and leather rubbing along denim as his belt ripped from his belt loops. With renewed vigor, she pulled on the restraints.
“Wait! You said you worked for Santa Claus. Santa doesn’t kidnap and hurt people!” At least not in any of the fairy tales her mother told her as a child.
“That’s right. He doesn’t.” A hard step closer. “He has a small division of elves that take care of the naughty list chosen.” Another step. “And as I already explained, you are one of the three chosen.” A fire lit up across her ass cheeks, searing up through her body.
She screamed.
“Now. Do I have your attention?” he demanded after a second lash hit her thighs.
“Yes!” She blinked back the tears forming. It was only two straps. She should be able to take more than that. Hell, she’d taken worse than that before without so much as a whimper.
“Good. Today you’re taking a punishment for your misbehavior. For stealing, for lying, and for being a general bitch to everyone around you.”
She rested her head against the wall. He got to call her a bitch, but she couldn’t curse at all.
“I’m paying my mom back. I didn’t steal from her, I just needed the credit,” she explained. It had ruined her relationship with her parents, but she was paying them back. Every month she sent money to them, and they silently cashed her check.
