by Liz K. Lorde
“You don’t know that,” I croaked, “you don’t know them.”
“But I know you,” he said, “and I want to know you more and more every day. They will understand,” he said, “and your friends—“
“Colleagues.”
“Your work friends, will be sympathetic. The ones that aren’t, well, if it’s bad enough just ask this big bad wolf right here – and I’ll blow their house of cowardice down.”
I brushed back the strands of my hair, as they were clinging to my face, and I sniffled, for what I hoped to be, the final time. “And you?”
“You’re mine now,” he said, “do you hear me?” I nodded my head, and Gabriel pushed me down against the bed, kissing my lips and keeping me pinioned beneath the weight of his sculpted body. “I’ll raise that boy as my own,” he whispered, and trailed kisses all along my neck, “it’s your body. Your choice. If you want,” Gabriel pulled away, to look down at me, “I can go with you, if you want to… you know.”
“I know,” I tried to swallow away the hard lump in my throat. The thorn in my chest wouldn’t go away. “I-I haven’t decided.”
“That’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
Gabriel kissed me again, “You shouldn’t even have to face a decision like this. Nobody should. You do what your heart and your head tell you, and I’ll back you no matter what.” Gabriel moved from me to the edge of the bed, and craned his head to look back at me, “now I need to know where this motherfucker lives. If you don’t want me to bury him, fine, but he needs to be run out of this town. These people? People like him? They only respond to violence.”
My eyes drifted away, “I know.”
“Tell me where he lives, Mads. I’ll teach him a lesson he won’t forget.”
I brought my gaze back to Gabriel, pushed a long breath from my nose, and gave him all that I knew.
28
Gabriel
My heart was still pounding with rage. I couldn’t believe what Madeline had just told me, the bombs that she had just dropped. How could she have been with someone so absolutely sick? That subhuman piece of trash. It was my duty now, to dispose of him - my mission. And no person, or thing, could stop me from being the angel that I was - this angel of destruction had someone to protect, someone to kill for now; beyond my brotherhood, there was a light in my life now.
And I wasn’t going to let a weak, small-time drug-pushing coward like Damien Duponte snuff it out.
Putting on a black v-neck and my club cut, I strode over to MJ and kissed her one more time, taking in those gorgeous lips I’d come to crave. “You try and get some sleep,” I instructed, “I know it’ll be impossible. But just try, okay?”
She nodded her head, and told me to be safe. I let her know that she didn’t need to worry about me; I kissed the tips of my fingers and gave a kiss to her belly; the thought was scary enough for me, so I couldn’t imagine how she felt. But if I was going to be a father, I wanted to do things right. Even if it wasn’t my child by blood, I loved that girl too much to let her face anything alone ever again. I’d bring him up as mine.
Until I seeded her myself, at least. Brothers. Now there was a thought that made my lips curl into a tight smirk.
“What?” Mads asked.
I just gave a dry laugh, “Nothing. Don’t wait up for me,” I told her, turned away and grabbed my wooden baseball bat from the closet.
It wasn’t long before I hopped on my bike and headed down the street; a brief time later and I was merging into traffic and heading quick to Damien’s apartment. I knew that Luke wouldn’t be too pleased with me doing something like this, but I was VP - and someone was messing with my girl. That couldn’t stand.
Luke would do the same thing.
Every bone in my body was aching to hurt this coward. Every cell in my brain was screaming that I needed to end his miserable life, what kind of kid would grow up and want to meet a dad like that, anyway? Still, Madeline didn’t seem on board with going that far. So I knew that I had to keep a stop-gap on my anger.
But that damn sensation to annihilate him just kept growing. This gripping heat at the base of my spine. My muscles held a dull, powerful ache - my whole body thirsting for blood and destruction.
By the time that I arrived, I was full on seeing red. I parked my bike just outside and killed the engine, striding towards the front door of the complex. It was just a small set of granite steps.
My breathing had become hard and quick, and I could feel my heart hammering away in my chest at this point. There was this lightness in my head, this quarter-sized hole in the back that burned something fierce.
When my hand connected to the doorknob, and I opened the door, my whole body became overtook with a tingling wave of sensations. This was the hunt. The thrill. My profession in darkness.
For a small moment, I felt guilty. What if I wouldn’t make a good father; should I not do this? What would my surrogate— no. My son. What would he think if he knew that I’d done this to his biological, asshole of a father?
I pushed the thought from my head and my heart. He would just have to understand, if the day ever comes.
Entering the building, I ascended the long series of wooden steps, my hand hovering over the sandy colored wooden rail. There was much difficulty in trying to be quiet, when doing a B and E while in the throes of a rage. Still, I knew what my ‘plan’ was going to be. There was no need to be sneaky, no real need for subterfuge. The response times were drilled into my mind, and even if luck wasn’t on my side - I’d only need one good minute. One good minute to change this scum’s life.
When I reached the floor that Madeline had specified Damien lived on, I looked between the doors, trying to find the specific number. When I finally came across it, my heart dropped in my chest - and I felt my jaw jump with anticipation. I gripped the handle of the bat tighter, and I made long, predatory strides to the large, white colored door. My boot promptly met the face of the door, and I kicked it in a second time, and then a third. It quickly gave way on the fourth attempt, and a series of splinters exploded on the hinges of it. Where I had kicked it, there was a broken concave; the door jumped back an inch or two and clattered to the ground loudly.
Ten seconds.
When I heard one, maybe two, women yelping in surprise from somewhere in the apartment, and a familiar voice yelling, “What the fuck!” I knew that I was in the right place. Darkness was all around me, so my hand shot out to my side, brushing along the wall looking for a switch. Nothing. Cursing beneath my breath, I dashed to my right, in the direction of the voices.
Nearly colliding with the silhouette of a TV, I quickly stepped to the side and made a sprint for the wall next to a door.
Twenty seconds.
My heart pounded in my chest as I waited. It didn’t take long for the door beside me to open, and for a half dressed man to jut out of the room with a glock at the ready.
Not wasting any time, I swung the bat hard and fast – the weapon wooshed through the air and struck Damien’s gun hand. I could feel the end of the bat making contact with his wrist, feeling the vibrations of it’s violent connection all the way up to the handle. My heart thumped heavy in my chest, and a cracking noise filled the air just before an instinctual cry of pain.
The glock was knocked from his grasp, and it clattered against the floor. Damien immediately jumped back into his bedroom, and I presume he had intended to try and lock it. But, I was too quick.
Twenty five seconds.
Bursting through the door, I shoved the kid to the floor. The anger was pumping through me something fierce.
One of the girls tugged on the nightstand lamp. Orange light blossomed in the dark room, filling it up and revealing the two scantily clad prostitutes.
“Leave,” I demanded, “and make sure all of your friends know, that if you roll with this gutter trash, it won’t end well.”
The two women rushed to put on some of their clothes, and bolted past me for the front door.
Forty seconds.
Damien cursed and tried to get up to his feet, so naturally I helped him with that, by grabbing him by the hair and throwing him onto the bed. “Fuck!” He yelled, “just take whatever you want from me you fuck, I’ve got powerful friends. You’ll—“
My bat swung through the air and connected firmly, but not shatteringly so, with the side of his mouth – the bat nearly breaking bone and throwing his head to one side. His throat tightened up instantly, and his teeth clamped shut; the next instant, and he was groaning through a closed mouth in horrific pain. I brought up a finger pointed at the man, lifting up a boot onto the bed. “Listen here, you worthless little shit.” I readied my bat and gave a thundering blow to Damien’s right kneecap. He howled just like all the rest of those hard talking assholes I’d taken out in my day.
Fifty five seconds.
“You are going to leave this town, do you hear me? I’m giving you a week.” I didn’t wait for him to answer. I knew that I needed to be gone. “Never come back. And if you ever want to be a part of your kids life, if MJ keeps them, then you better be straight with God and yourself and the world. Because I will be there. Every time. She is the only reason you keep breathing tonight.” I watched him squirm on the bed, knowing that I’d went past my minute limit. My gaze fell on his other kneecap, and for that brief moment before my bat came slashing through the air again – we shared a look, a pleading one he gave me. “Think on that,” I hissed before turning around and storming out.
At least that was one demon down and conquered
29
Madeline
Sunlight poured in from the window of Gabriel’s room, and the morning made itself known. I’d fallen asleep, somehow, while waiting for Gabriel to return. In dreams, I’d been in a dark place surrounded by candles – and in my arms was my electric guitar, the one from my room at home. It was half remembered, maybe even a part of me wished to hide it away, perhaps. But some of those images stuck with me. Gabriel bleeding through the darkness, the darkness that existed like it were a flame. This fire that I could not see past, that flickered and darkly shimmered. I witnessed Gabriel take Damien’s life, and my fingers worked quick and fast along the fretboard.
Maybe I was afraid of what Gabriel had done. How far he had gone.
This feeling of dread burrowed into my chest, then. What if something had went wrong?
Forcing my eyes wide open and turning, I rolled over onto my other side and my heart squeezed with delight and relief at the sight of a shirtless, peaceful, drooling Gabriel. A smile walked along the lines of my face, and I inched myself closer to him. Pressing my lips against his jaw and neck, I kissed him until he was roused from sleep.
Gabriel groaned, and his eyes fluttered wearily to life – his arm reaching over towards me and draping over my body. Just that single touch was enough to shoot needles through my body, and I snuggled in closer to him. “You know, even guys need their beauty sleep,” he clipped in that early morning voice. His rough and tough tones always seemed to send a punch to my more… sensual components.
“Yeah well you’re beautiful enough to be a modern prince, I think you can take a few early morning interruptions every now and again.”
Gabriel snorted and moved his great hand down to my ass, squeezing tight. “Your butt helps.”
Mmf, asshole. “Thanks, i think.”
“It was definitely a compliment,” he whispered into my neck and squeezed again, moving to the other cheek.
“Did you know that you drool?” I asked.
“I don’t drool,” Gabriel replied gruffly.
“You think your pillows just get all wet and sticky for no reason?”
His hand playfully worked its way past my hip and dipped down to my crotch, erotically rubbing at the wet folds of my pussy. “Figured it was your fault, seeing as this is such a constant culprit.” His finger plunged itself inside, feeling around my walls - and they clung tightly to his explorative finger, joyously so.
I sucked in a tight breath, pleasure filling up the lower half of my body, and a subtle electricity finding its way to my nipples, causing them to grow hard. “It is normally to blame,” I admitted, and then laughed before kissing along Gabriel’s jaw. “But seriously, it was all your disgusting caveman mouth, I swear.”
“Call me a caveman and you’ll get treated like I am one,” Gabriel’s tone was full of amusement, and his fingers danced in and out of my pussy now; quicker and quicker still they moved, his body moving on top of me - his lips curling into a tight, knowing smirk. That bastard knew what he was doing, even in his sleepy and groggy state he knew exactly how my body would respond to the way he was touching me. His fingers delved deeper into the slick confines of my pussy, filling up my greedy canal.
My hand instinctively reached for the length of his hard cock, petting it up and down and grabbing it at the root, giving him a firm grip. I stroked that beautiful cock up and down, slowly, teasingly, a smile forming on my face and a thorn of happiness pricking at my breast.
When our lips met for a series of long, hard kisses, the ends of my nipples ached delightfully - they demanded to be sucked, so I steered Gabriel from my mouth and down to my breasts. He kissed and he licked, he sucked and he whispered sinfully delicious praises, giving special care to my nipples - the noise of his mouth popping around them, god, it only made the walls of my warm, lusting pusssy, need to feel his cock all the more.
Before we became too lost in our thrall of pleasure and exploration, I brushed my hand through his long, pretty-boy hair. “Tell me what happened last night,” I said, “after you left.”
Gabriel looked down on me with a hard look, his fingers pulling out of my sex and gliding over to my clit, circling and rubbing playfully at it. My clit slowly but surely became engorged from the attention, and my whole body was waking up with warmth and bliss - each muscle in my body being directed by the attention that Gabriel was giving my clit. If I was an instrument, then he was my handsome, devilish player. “Can’t tell you that, love.”
“But I want to know, Gabriel.”
His face grew sad, and the lines of his face began to droop, “I won’t tell you any details,” he explained, “but I didn’t kill him.” He stopped playing with my pussy then, and in turn, I stopped messing with his cock. “Since you weren’t comfortable with it, even though I think the bastard well earned it. Told him to skip town and never come back, and that if he ever wants to see your kid - he better radically change himself.”
I placed my hands on Gabriel’s hips, pushing him back down onto the bed and moving over him. “I never wanted to have a baby, you know,” I confessed, “it wasn’t something that I even thought about. But, with it inside of me… it just, it feels wrong to give it up.”
Gabriel placed a soft hand on the side of my face, and gave me a series of smooth, affectionate strokes. “It’s okay to feel that way,” he said, “it’s okay, Madeline. You do what you want to do, what you have to do. It’s your body. Your life.”
“It doesn’t always feel like it is,” I felt the sting of tears in the back of my eyes, and a clutching pain in my chest. I then repeated my words, softer this time, with the urge to collapse against Gabriel’s chest burning inside of me.
“I’m sorry, baby, but I believe in you. In whatever choice you make, I’ll still be there. If you want to keep the bun in the oven, fine. If you think that it would be better for everyone, then by all means… do what you have to.”
I fell down onto his gloriously hard body, and we melted in to one another - like our bodies couldn’t fit any more perfectly together, like we had been separated and were now made whole. “Thank you,” I told him, holding him as tightly and as close as I was able - listening, just listening to hear our beating hearts becoming one. “For everything,” I added.
His hand brushed through the length of my head and hair, soothing me with each stroke - calming me for every worry that rooted itself within my head and in my troubled heart. The
re wasn’t any other man like him. Never had been. Never will be. And I knew that now, I knew that with a certainty that burned in my chest - I’d felt it when I first laid eyes on him, even that night when I had flicked him off; I was never one to believe in destiny, or a higher power: Gabriel was my fatemaker.
I went to his ear and placed a kiss just beneath it, whispering, “I want to have your babies.” It was difficult to believe that those words even left my mouth, but when my heart skipped a beat, when I felt the love in his eyes as he looked at me, I knew then, just as much as he, how serious I really was. “I want to keep it, Gabe. But I want them to have a brother, or a sister, and I want them to look to you - only to you, as their father.”
“Madeline…” Gabriel susurrated, water filling his beautiful brown eyes. He pulled me in long and tight, and after our great hug and embrace was over, I pulled myself back just a little, and I moved my hips, sending a hand down to his still erect cock. Then, I guided that gorgeous head to the entrance of my soaked pussy, my pussy that was greedy and in supreme need of his sex; every inch of me ached for it, every part of my mind turned for it.
When I managed to pop it inside of me, I instantly felt the warmth and the relief and the bliss. Everything slipped away. All worries, all fear. Each inch that I fed myself, each moan that I gave and for every groan from Gabriel that my ears picked up, it only stirred me into a higher, more delicious state of sexual arousal and frenzy. I wanted to fuck this man like I’d never fucked something before, I wanted to be taken by him in ways that I couldn’t imagine - and as my heart thumped in my chest, pounding so quick and fast in my ears, I began to ride him.
I rode his cock long and hard, fast, so very fast I moved. But fuck. It was all so perfect. The way that my hands felt against his chiseled chest, the way his cock filled me perfectly like there wasn’t any in the world that could fill me like Gabriel. I knew, I knew that much in my soul - he was the man that was slowly but surely threading every faucet of being into my soul. And I, I was just the willing canvas, ready to accept and take him all in, now and forever.
