Redemption (2 page)

Mara leaned forward, placing a kiss as light as a feather on his cheek. Why did he have to be so wonderful? She was in Lucifer’s service, she had been able to destroy the lives of any man he wished, without a second thought - until now.

It wasn’t exactly like she was feeling remorse about what she was doing. Toying with Bryan was still
fun
. But, maybe it wasn’t as much fun as it should be, at least for someone like her.

No, it definitely wasn’t remorse...but she did want to keep him. He had qualities that she found amusing. She knew the end result of every assignment she’d been given, and she frowned when she pictured Bryan in any of those scenarios. The men would fall so deeply into despair and destruction that they’d eventually find a way to end their sorrow. Usually at the bottom of a bottle of pills. Or the end of the barrel of a gun. Sometimes, with a blade. None of it had ever mattered to her before, not since making her choice. She simply wasn’t ready for Bryan’s time to end. She...enjoyed him.

For a second, she remembered the pale glimmer of another life. One with someone who had meant a great deal to her.

Bastion.

She hadn’t thought about her angelic counterpart in more lifetimes than these petty humans could count. Why would memories of him come to her now? Mara sighed as she watched Bryan sleeping. He was so safe. He’d wanted to protect her, take care of her, after only briefly meeting her on the flight back to California.

Of course. How could she not have seen it? The reason, so plain and simple, and it infuriated her.

“I know it’s you,” she whispered to the darkness, red eyes casting an eerie glow across Bryan’s face. “He’s yours, isn’t he?”

No reply came to her.

“Just because he reminds me of you does not mean I won’t end him,” Mara continued. “I think I’ll keep him for a bit longer than some of the others, but in the end, he’ll die. They
all
die.”

Still no reply.

Outraged at Bastion’s silence, she placed her lips to Bryan’s temple, the gesture mimicking a kiss. She glanced around the room, daring him to step forward. When the angel refused, she inhaled, and with that breath, she stole from Bryan his memories, bits of his personality, more of his will to resist. As she exhaled her own power into him, she replaced what she’d taken with fabrications. Anxiety. Depression. Loss.

Mara looked defiantly around the room, empty except for Bryan and herself. She knew that Bastion was nearby. She could feel his eyes on her. He wasn’t showing himself, so she estimated that it was a result of not being powerful enough to overcome her influence over the mortal.

Bryan stirred in his sleep. Mara looked at him again, some foreign emotion washing over her. She couldn’t identify it; too much time had passed for her to recognize it by name. She pressed her lips to his skin again, this time to his forehead, giving back a tiny bit of what she’d just taken. She wasn’t sure why she did it; but now that it was done, it couldn’t be undone. She was tired. These days, expending the energy sometimes made her feel weary.

Lying down beside him, Mara curled one arm around his body, snuggling closer. He was so warm; she sighed again and pressed her ear to his chest, feeling its rise and fall, listening to the even rhythm of his heartbeat.

He meant nothing. He’d only reminded her of Bastion.

She jerked away instinctively as more of the memory surfaced. Bastion who had turned his back on her. Abandoned her. Refused to leave with her. Left her to Lucifer and his twisted nature. Thankfully, her body was incapable of permanently showing the scars that his demented pleasures had caused her. Marks from his lashings, beatings, or other...abuses...would simply vanish by the next human day.

Of course, she always remembered them. And that made her more vicious in her work. More violent. More creative in her methods.

Wasn’t that the point of it all?

Bryan reached out, searching for her in his slumber. She thought that, while he slept, he looked like a little boy. A very sad, bruised, and lonely little boy. Mara’s eyebrows pinched together, and she reached up to wipe away something wet that had fallen onto her cheek.

A tear.

That was impossible. And completely inconvenient.

She allowed him to pull her close and even acknowledged that she liked the feel of his arms around her more than she should. He was talking again, mumbling in his sleep. It was always the same name that haunted him, waking or sleeping.
Miranda.
It was really too bad Lucifer wouldn’t let her loose on that little witch. She deserved to suffer a bit for what she’d done to Bryan.

Now that
, Mara thought,
would really be fun.
Her lips curled into a smile, and she drifted off to sleep.

 

H
ow long had it been? Bryan tried unsuccessfully to unclog his brain. Weeks? Months? The days were all a blur, and none of them seemed to contain anything worth recalling. Except for Mara.

No, he didn’t want to think about before. Mara could make it all go away. She helped him, made him feel better.

Or, at the very least, she helped him not to feel anything substantial at all.

He stood in the doorway of his bedroom, watching the raven-haired beauty who’d shared his bed for...he paused in his thoughts...six months. He knew now; it had been six months since he returned to California. Six months of occupying his time with her. Six months of trying to pry Miranda from his heart and move on.

Question: Why wouldn’t Miranda just
leave
?

Answer: Bryan wasn’t ready for her to go.

Fate had placed Mara beside him on the plane; and sometime during the first few weeks they were together, she’d moved in. She rolled over, exposing just enough skin to make him take a step forward in her direction. She was so hard to resist. Some people chose drugs or alcohol to forget. Bryan chose her. As long as he stayed near Mara, the pain dulled. It was when she was apart from him that he was forced to think, and thinking was low on his list of preferred activities right now. He liked the arrangement they had; when Miranda’s memory became a weight that was too difficult to bear, he knew that Mara would step in, seeming to sense his pain, and erase it with her own form of therapy. There was something magical in what she could do to him, and he didn’t mind letting her do it over and over again.

He scratched his beard. “I need to work, Mara. It’s been too long.”

“Work?” She stretched and yawned. “This is just a dry spell, Bryan. Besides, I don’t mind taking care of things. After all you’ve done for me, helping you is the least I could do.” She smiled at him seductively and rubbed the empty space next to her. “Come back to bed. I’m lonely.”

He should work, though, shouldn’t he? There was something very wrong about depending on Mara’s money. Bryan wondered, for a microsecond, where her money even came from. She left the apartment for work two days a week, so there was an office she reported to somewhere. A boss, coworkers, he imagined a desk. Still, what kind of job allowed her to work two days a week and make enough to afford, well, living?

He shrugged,
Who really cares?

There was no way he loved her, no way he’d ever love her. Even as he struggled to free himself from the quicksand that was his mind, he knew that much. And it was just fine with Bryan. Love had cost him; it had made a fool of him. Bryan was done playing the fool. Besides, he had a good time with Mara. She was incredible, both in and out of bed, no doubt about that. Her silken, black hair hung nearly to her waist and her eyes - mesmerizing. She called them azurite, and in his moments of clarity he recalled that his first impression of them had been that they looked a lot like the waters of the Caribbean. A person could swim in those waters, and Bryan often felt like he was swimming - or, more accurately, drowning - when she looked at him. And the way she could move, well, poetry had been written about women like her.

No, he didn’t love her. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure how to label what he felt. If he was with her, his body hurt less. While they were apart, Bryan thought he might split in two from the agony. Instead of lessening with time, his grief over losing Miranda to another man was only getting worse. Which was precisely why he kept Mara around.

His brain searched for a word; thoughts were thick, like molasses. He waded through them as if stuck in tar. Coming up with a word shouldn’t be this difficult. At last, one struck him as the answer.

Intoxicated. That was how she made him feel. She didn’t care if he was a mess or falling apart or completely incapable of loving her. Mara was the embodiment of numbing bliss, and that was exactly what Bryan wanted to feel. Numb.

He slid back into bed with her and she quickly rolled on top of him, folding him into her arms, her hair spilling around them both. Bryan smiled at her, his eyes heavy. “What are you doing to me?”

Mara’s eyes gleamed, and for a second Bryan thought he saw red swirl around the pupil. He was losing it. Seriously losing it. He blinked hard and tried to focus on her face. Her eyes were blue, like always.

“I just want to be here for you, Bryan. You don’t have ever have to hurt again. You don’t have to worry. You don’t have to do anything but be with me. Let me take care of everything,” she said, her voice coating him and dripping off every nerve like honey.

“Mmmm. That sounds good,” he agreed.

But he
needed
to think. There was something he wanted to talk to her about, someone he was supposed to call. He shook his head briskly as if waking up from a dream. Ah, yes. He remembered now. “Wait. Mara, I do need to work. I need to get out of this apartment. Nick called and mentioned something about a job; I have to call him back.”

Mara reached up and caressed his cheek, allowing her fingers to slide down his jaw, his neck, his chest. “Not today. Maybe tomorrow. For now, just touch me.” She leaned in and kissed him.

Bryan fell into the kiss, and again had the sensation of slipping deeper and deeper underwater. His lips slid down her neck, peppering her skin with kisses. He stopped, his eyes momentarily regaining focus as he looked at the tattoo on the back of her neck.

The blue lotus was beautiful, just like Mara. When he kissed it, he imagined he could feel the softness of its petals. Surely it was only his imagination, but it felt so real. He kissed it again and inhaled, a fragrance as exotic as Mara filling his nostrils. The world around him began to blur. All he could see was the woman whose face hovered above his own.

And just as he’d done every day for the past six months, Bryan willingly gave over a bit more of himself to her.

N
ick picked up the phone and dialed the number again. One of these times, he knew that Bryan would pick up. The guy must be screening his calls. Nick could understand why he might not want to talk, but it had been six months. The phone rang on the other end, and Bryan’s voicemail picked up. Nick rolled his eyes and left what he estimated to be the tenth message.

He and Carrie were getting married. They were looking for a photographer, and months ago Nick had suggested Bryan, using their friendship as a good reason for the choice. Carrie had taken the bait and agreed.

Now if Nick could just get the guy to answer his phone. Carrie wouldn’t wait forever.

She walked into the room carrying a bowl of popcorn. “Well? Any luck yet?”

“No,” Nick answered. “But I’ll get him.”

“You’ve been trying for, what, two months now? Maybe we should just go with another photographer,” she suggested. “Maybe he doesn’t want to come back here after, you know, everything that happened.”

Nick considered just how right Carrie’s assessment might be. He reviewed the facts. Miranda had chosen Derek, Nick’s best friend, over Bryan. He’d flown across the country to win her back, and she’d turned him down. The level to which that had to suck for Bryan was beyond his comprehension.

His own relationship with Carrie, on the other hand, had been so easy, so natural. From very early on, he knew that they were meant for one another. He smiled upon remembering her reaction to the ring he’d saved for nearly a year to buy. The day Nick proposed he’d barely been nervous as the question spilled from his lips; he was positive her answer would be yes.

Followed by much squealing, many phone calls, and great exuberance.

She hadn’t let him down.

“He’ll call,” Nick said, not with certainty, but with hope.

“Hypothetically speaking, if he does call and agrees to be our photographer, Miranda’s going to be an issue,” Carrie said, picking up a few pieces of popcorn and tossing them into her mouth. “She’s my maid of honor. Do you think he can handle that?”

“Well, I suppose if he ever calls back, we’ll find out,” Nick answered, urgency finding its way into his voice. “I think he can. Carr, he needs to come back; I don’t know why or how I know that, but I do.”

She shrugged. “Bryan’s a runner. I’ve known him for years, and it’s how he copes. I’m not sure you’re right on this one, but I’m calling that guy Roy we talked to at church if we don’t hear from Bryan in few more days. He has until the end of the week, Nick. That’s the best I can do. I know we’re keeping this small and quiet, but I’m really scared we won’t get anyone now. We can’t keep waiting for Bryan; the wedding is in two and a half weeks.”