“Dona.” He murmured her name, sinking deeper. She arched, wanting all of him and more.

“Mine,” she whispered back, biting his lips a little harder, feeling him swell inside her at the sensual punishment, the claim on him.

“Yours,” he agreed. “Forever, Mistress. Yours to fuck…however, whenever…” Humor glinted through his gaze, but something darker too.

“Mine to love.”

Something got still in his face. She saw the shadows. Before they could claim him, take him away from her, she cupped his jaw. “The way love is meant to be,” she whispered. “The way you’ve never known. Trust me, Nathan. Save both our souls.

Trust me.”

Bending, he took hold of her breast in his mouth, suckled gently while she cupped the back of his head, encouraging him to let the tension in his arms ease until he was lying full upon her. Plowed deep in the fertile earth of her body, he nourished himself from her breast. She could feel the desire in him. The need. She wondered if he knew how much she needed to know he would surrender to her. She stroked his hair. “I wish this was our reality. I wish I’d gotten to you sooner.” I wish I’d let you keep your hair. She watched it spill over her fingers, those beautiful ash blond locks bleached by the sun.

He didn’t lift his head, for of course he couldn’t hear what she related from another plane. God, his mouth. His mouth alone was worth his weight in gold. He suckled, licked, squeezed her with his calloused hands, arousing her so she didn’t have to think.

Not at this moment. She tightened her legs on him and his hand slid down her thigh, cupped her buttock, lifted her as he rose up over her now, letting her feel his slow thrusts become more powerful.

“Not until I say so,” she managed on a breath. His eyes gleamed.

“Not until I make you scream. And I will, Mistress.” She reared up, clasping his neck to put her mouth on his. Not urgent nips and tongue thrusts despite the spiraling need in her, but slow caresses with her lips. She kept her eyes open so she could smooth his brow, watch his eyes close as he couldn’t face what was in hers.

I love you.

When he shuddered, she moved to his temple, feeling his arms band around her back. Pulling her all the way up, he took her to a sitting position straddling him.

Burying his face in her breasts again, he impaled her hard on his cock, making her gasp.

She wanted him to look at her, tried to get him to lift his head.

“I can’t…” His voice was hoarse.

“You can. You can give it all to me. You’re a treasure. My treasure.” She squeezed down on him tight, feeling her own body convulse, so close… God, he was so perfect. So damaged and yet so perfect. This was the time when he hadn’t had so much polish, when he was still learning how to use his pain as a weapon.

Ironically, he’d already committed the crime that would take him irrevocably down that path. She could feel the guilt rising in him as her love frightened his subconscious into a corner, made him face that crime. She couldn’t let him turn away from that mirror. She couldn’t turn away from it either. She had to let go of this reality.

This isn’t your time together. It’s an illusion that never was. A fantasy.

The dream melted away and she was looking at the man a decade later. She could see all the evil clinging to him, like oozing green mud from a swamp. She knew what he looked like under all of that. It was her job to know. That was why cleaning it off was going to tear her apart.

* * * * *

“There are three layers,” she said at last. Nathan let out a breath, knowing he’d gotten a temporary reprieve.

“Hell, Redemption, Purgatory. They’re like three spokes of a wheel and the Hall of Souls is the hub.” Her voice was soft, rich, distracting him with the vision of her mouth.

“Once you go through Hell or Redemption, whichever is necessary, you choose your next life in the Hall of Souls and return to Earth to pay your karmic debt.”

“So our world is Purgatory.”

“Yes and no. The mortal plane is a place for souls to pay karmic debts, but it’s also the place where reincarnated souls without karmic debts to pay continue their lessons toward enlightenment. It’s also a place for new souls to start their journey. Having all three in the same place gives those with more spiritual knowledge the chance to help guide those with less. We all move toward spiritual peace together. Just at different paces.”

“So, what’s the difference between Hell and Redemption?” She hesitated. For some reason that brief pause created a coldness in the pit of his belly. The conversation had started naturally enough. A way to put off the inevitable. A small blessing of time to hear her voice, feel the grip of her hand. As the silence stretched out between them, the pleasure slipped away, as did her hand.

“Hell is pain,” she said at last. “Horrible pain at every emotional and physical level of who you are. It’s punishment for conscious sin and it’s purification to the very marrow. It’s reserved for souls who are so corrupted that it’s the most efficient option for them. The soul enters the mortal plane as a new soul, starting its journey again with no memory of what came before.”

“That’s bad?”

“It means you’ve gone to the beginning of the Monopoly board. All the lessons must be relearned, the paths re-walked. The destination of ultimate enlightenment, of peace and tranquility, is as far away as it can get. It’s like… How would you like to have to do school all over again? Starting in kindergarten and go through it all? Bullies, humiliation, not fitting in, et cetera. Without the benefit of any hindsight to give you a leg up, the ‘if I knew now what I knew then’?”

“It would suck.” Many images came to his mind, very few of them pleasant. Visions of his Mistresses he could take, but he would not revisit high school. “It would suck,” he repeated, vehemently.

“Redemption is the process of using a lesser level of pain to get to the whys without erasing the memory. Breaking the crust of evil off of the soul, so to speak, giving it a fighting chance to make up for past wrongs on its next incarnation.”

“Like a dental cleaning. Go to Redemption every six months before Hell happens.” She could see his face, though she was denying him the same ability. His wry smile distracted her. He had a clever mind, a natural charm. She wondered if he realized how genuinely funny he could be. However, right now it was a defense mechanism. She could see the memories from his teens surging into his mind, his frantic attempts to pull a curtain over them before he experienced them fully. A moment before, she’d cursed Lucifer for making it possible for her to see this, but seeing the face he was trying so hard to avoid seeing helped her remember why she was here.

When his Mistress did not laugh, Nathan swallowed. His stomach felt as if it were rubbing against the jagged edges of his spine. “So I avoided Hell.” He made another attempt. “I guess that was some kind of miracle.” With the theater dark, he couldn’t see her reaction. Could see nothing but thoughts like a blurred landscape flashing by, his foot pressing down on a useless brake in a car headed for a cliff.

“In a manner of speaking, yes, I guess it is.” Her answer sounded cautious.

“Dona, how did I…” He needed to shut up or change topic. Everything in him screamed that ignorance was bliss. He wished he could see her face. “When can you leave here?”

“I could have left a decade ago. I chose to stay.”

“Why would anyone stay here?”

“Because here evil only wears one mask. I know to the nth degree how good or bad someone is. No dissembling, no way to hide behind façades.”

“No chance of love or happiness.”

“I had that chance. I’d rather not risk pain like that again.”

“So you’ll never leave here. I’ll never… After I leave… Dona…” He reached out in the dark, didn’t question how he knew perfectly where her face was to cup the delicate oval in both hands. “No. No,” he repeated. Leaning forward, he pressed his forehead to hers. He was amazed that she hadn’t drawn away from him—not that he would have let her at this moment if he could prevent it—but…

God in heaven, why was this so important?

“Dona, who are you to me? All of your…assignments… They don’t all feel like this about you, do they?”

He was as much as admitting she’d drawn something out of him no one had, but his curiosity now burned more fiercely than his fear of giving her an advantage. A long moment passed as he held her face like that. He could feel her staring at him in the pitch darkness. When she drew back, he reluctantly let her go, feeling her jaw slide along his fingers, her chin as she turned her face back to the stage. “We all go through things in our lives.” There was a tremor in her voice, a raw reaction that made him wonder if he was going to regret asking the question. “Some things we handle right.

Some things we handle wrong. Do you know what we’re most afraid of?” He shook his head. “No.”

“That no one will understand us. Nothing means anything if your soul believes it will always be lonely. Alone. You know how you sometimes wake up in the deadest part of the night by yourself and wonder if this is what it’s like to die, not able to take anyone with you for company, to give you courage? It can be overwhelming.” He’d done that in prison countless times, his body drenched in a cold sweat of fear.

What was strange was remembering having the same type of panic attacks in his expensive townhouse. As if all the trappings he’d collected around him were silent, futile sentinels against his nightmares.

“I don’t know why they do many of the things they do, but the Lord and Lady knew that. Knew that even belief in Them wouldn’t be enough to give most of us enough strength to realize our full potential. So They made us in Their image. For every one of us, there’s a soul mate out there. We may not meet him or her in every lifetime, but the connection between us is felt, even when our lives don’t touch.” He knew what she was going to say. He should have been ready to scoff, but it was as simple a truth as if she was about to tell him an innocuous fact. My eyes are blue, I’m six foot three and…

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