Mercy

by Lucian Bane

  The sound of a horn reached her and she turned off the water, listening. She thought about it then. Not a horn, more like… a trumpet sound? What the hell?

  Getting out the shower, she crept to the door and opened it, listening. Nothing. But her body was humming with fear for some reason. She dressed quickly and quietly exited the bathroom and made her way into the living room. Looking around, she found it empty. She scoped out the dining and kitchen and found everything in order.

  Double checking the locks, she went back to her room and regarded the light in Sade’s bathroom. Walking over, she knocked on the door. “You okay?”

  Not getting an answer, she knocked harder. “Sade?”

  The water was running. Panic slammed her and she tried to open the door. She banged loudly. “Sade!” she screamed.

  Shaking, she darted back about five feet and shot to the door, slamming her body into it. It banged open and she fell into the bathroom in a sprawl. “Sade!” she screamed, scrambling to her knees and crawling to the tub.

  “Sade please!” She pulled his arm up and found a long horizontal slit oozing with blood. “Oh God,” she choked, holding the limb like a bat and squeezing with all her might to stop the flow of blood. His eyes were shut and his mouth slack. She needed to check his pulse but she didn’t want to let go. “Sade, wake up!” she yelled through a sob.

  The first aid kit in the basement flashed in her mind and she reluctantly ran for it. Returning to his bathroom, the kit flew open and contents exploded everywhere. She crawled on the floor and grabbed the rubber tourniquet and raced to the tub, tying it above his elbow. She then scrambled for the gauze. “You’re okay,” she whispered, shakily, wrapping his arm. “I got you. Gonna wrap this up,” she barely managed as she wound it tight then held it in both her hands again. “Gonna stop this bleeding,” she sniffed, calming her tone. “Not a problem. I’m a nurse.” Tears surged with a sob. “I got your back,” she choked. “But you gotta stay with me, stay with me. Sade, can you hear me? Don’t leave Sade,” she said loudly. “Not yet, it’s not your time.”

  When the wound finally stopped bleeding, she quickly felt his pulse and wailed in relief at the faint sensation still there. She let the water out of the tub next. “My daddy used to say,” she began softly, “that some people are born to survive. No matter what comes their way, no matter how much pain is dealt them, they live. They survive it somehow. That was me, he said. And I think it’s you too?” She nodded, petting his face. “Why else am I here, right? I’m supposed to be here!” she cried.

  Mercy needed to get him to his bed. God how? He was dead weight. She needed help.

  Mercy found his phone and searched the contacts. “Bo,” she gasped, remembering that name. She hit send and when he answered, she sobbed out all the details. He was coming right away. He wouldn’t tell anybody, she’d made sure. Sade wouldn’t want people knowing this.

  When Bo got there, he helped move him to the bed. He was so tore up over the sight of him, crying like a baby, making Mercy cry too.

  “He’s a good guy,” he kept saying. “He just had a hard life. That’s all. He takes care of me, did you know? He don’t really hurt nobody that don’t deserve it.” He shook his head, looking confused. “I don’t get why now, he didn’t even have a sexorcism.”

  “A what?” Mercy said, confused. She pulled Bo out of the room and into the hall. “A what?”

  Bo looked suddenly worried to tell. “He doesn’t do it often,” he whispered. “But when things get too bad, he has to get with a lot of women… you know?”

  Mercy covered her mouth. No, she did not know, and she didn’t want to in that second. She patted Bo on the shoulder and he nodded then went back and sat in the chair next to the bed like he planned to watch over him.

  Mercy was glad for it. She walked over and touched his arm and whispered, “I need to go to the pharmacy for supplies. Can you stay with him until I get back?”

  He gave her a confused look then nodded.

  “I’m a nurse. I know what to get, okay? You need anything?”

  He shook his head, looking back at Sade. “I’m good. Just hurry and get what he needs.” He looked at her. “He’ll be fine.”

  It was a statement that needed confirmation and Mercy nodded. “I’ll have him good as new in two days.” She patted him and hurried off.

  Coming back with all the supplies she could think of, Mercy checked his blood pressure and let out a sigh of relief at finding it not as bad as before.

  When she was sure he was stable, she dismissed Bo and went take a shower, leaving the door open so she could hear. The deal was, nobody was to know about this and Bo agreed. She hoped he kept his word.

  When she was done doing everything she could think of, Mercy sat on the edge of Sade’s bed and watched him. She stared at him in sleep and scooted closer to see him better. She wondered if he ever took out the earrings on his brow and if they bothered him. She regarded the one on his right nipple next and wondered why just the right one. Reaching up, she felt his forehead and found it warm but no fever. She turned his arm and made sure his wound wasn’t bleeding. Another sigh of relief to find it wasn’t. She stroked his arm softly, wanting to take away his pain, wanting to know how to do that.

  He suddenly mumbled something and her heart lurched as she leaned in to hear. “Shhh, you’re ok. You’re going to be fine.” She stroked the side of his face and his head lolled toward her.

  “W-…” A few seconds later, he seemed to fall back asleep. Mercy was drawn to study his face up close, particularly his full lips and the gash across the top right edge. They were fuller when at rest. Soft even. Such a contradiction to everything else about him. She realized his lashes were rather long. She hadn’t noticed. Maybe because she could never get past those bright gray eyes?

  “Mercy,” he mumbled.

  Her eyes flew up to his and found them still closed, his brows drawn together. “I’m here,” she whispered.

  “You’re here,” he whispered back. “Always here. Here to stop me,” he barely managed. “Next time…” he slowly smiled. “I’ll make sure.”

  “Okay, you’ll make sure.”

  He barely nodded. “You won’t stop me.”

  Panic slammed her guts and she withdrew from him a little. Dear God. “Why?” she asked, her whisper hoarse. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because… I can.”

  An odd anger burned through her at his words. Because he could. There wasn’t much he could do growing up. But now he could, couldn’t he? And yet. Why was she here? In his life? Why did she find that envelope that day? Accident? Fate? What was her purpose? Wasn’t it to help him? Why was everything backfiring?

  A memory surfaced in her mind. Not long after her father had rescued her. She’d wanted to die too, but oh, he’d not hear of it. He stood in the way of her pain and her death and he insisted she live. And she did.

  She had to be stronger than his pain. She wouldn’t let him die. She’d make him live. She’d make him overcome. She’d teach him how to survive no matter what it took. Just like her father had done with her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sade woke up and realized he couldn’t turn. He opened his eyes and gazed around. In his room. He looked right and narrowed his gaze in confusion. Why was he tied to the fucking bed? He moved his legs and found they were tied too. The fuck?

  He yanked on the restraints and found them solid. “Mercy!” he yelled.

  A few moments brought her running to the door with clothes in her arms. “You’re awake,” she sang, all sunshine and smiles.

  “Why am I tied?”

  She walked into the room and widened her eyes at him. “Because you’re a threat to my work.”

  “Your work?”

  “Yes. My helping you. I can’t help a dead man. And you seem hell bent on being that.”

  “Un. Fucking. Tie me.”

  She dumped the armful of clothes on the bed. “No can do.”

  “Mercy.
”

  She folded the clothes, not looking at him. “Yes?”

  “I’m going to get untied from here,” he began, “and when I do, I’ll put you where I am. Are you sure you want to do that?”

  She shrugged. “Taking my chances. But I’m pretty good at restraining. Had plenty of training in that.”

  “Is that a fact,” he said.

  “It very much is.” Her words were sincere and light as she put clothes in his drawer.

  In that second, his sadism roared to life and pulsed hard in his cock. Not fucking surprised. She’d done it now, hadn’t she? Is this what she wanted? To be a target of his sexual sadism? Well it was too late now, he knew how it went. That hunger wouldn’t rest until it had what it craved. And now it craved Mercy. Her broken beneath him.

  He was suddenly very fucking glad he was tied. For now.

  “I’m hungry,” he said, ready to escape while he wasn’t too pissed. Getting too pissed made it that much harder for him. He just needed to find her weakness and use it. Just a matter of time. A day maybe.

  She brightened. “I made scrambled eggs and bacon. Would you like toast with that?”

  “The works. And milk.”

  “Coming right up.” She headed out.

  “And I need the bathroom.” Fucking ought to be interesting.

  “Coming with your toilet.”

  His toilet. What the fuck.

  She returned with a tray and he spied an empty mason jar. “I’m not pissing in that.”

  “You’ll go on yourself then. And if you do that, I’ll let you sit in it a while before I rectify that foolish decision.”

  Sade pulled carefully on the restraints, pissed they were still just as uncompromising as when he first began working them. It was the fucking way she’d tied it, and with what she’d tied him. His entire forearms were harnessed—no doubt to protect his wound. And it was anchored to a kind of swivel base so that he could move it around all he wanted. Like rattling a cage, but that’s all it did because that’s all it was designed to do.

  He let her feed him, all the while staring at her.

  “You know, once I tried to kill myself.” She flashed him a scar on her right arm. “Was like dejavu when I found you. I never considered what my dad had felt during that. I was only thirteen and it had to be hard.”

  Sade slowed his chewing, wanting to know all about it but not ready to ask.

  “It was such a bad time.” She presented him with another bite, her gaze on his mouth. “Only like a year after he’d came and kidnapped me from where I was staying.”

  Sade was no longer hungry for food. He wanted to stare and contemplate her. He shook his head and she set the fork back on the plate.

  She gazed blankly into the air, her mouth very different looking without a smile. He remembered again how her lips felt under his brutal kiss and his dick got harder. He wanted to do things to her. And if she somehow found herself in the path of his sadistic desires it would be different with her than it was with the paid whores. He felt it burning in him. The near insatiable appetite he’d have with her. Never getting enough. She would break in the first hour he was sure.

  “Those nightmares wouldn’t stop,” she continued, lowering her head for a moment. “Dad would be there every night, wrap me in his arms and tell me it was all over but…” her head shook slowly, “wasn’t over. It was alive. Inside me. The fear, the pain, it was… so real.” She moved the food around on the plate now. “He didn’t save me from that life once. He saved me a million times. As many times as I needed saving.”

  Her tone said this was the method she would adopt with him. And Sade found it difficult to be all that pissed with her about it. He listened, hoping she divulged more details. That was the other hunger he had with her. To know her intricately, in every way. And exploit it.

  “And then I decided I’d make it stop.” She presented him with another bite, forgetting he wasn’t hungry. But he leaned and took it slowly. “There was only one way to make it all really go away. So I did it. Obviously I wasn’t that great at it.”

  “Obviously,” he said, his tone softer, burning to know what would make her go to that extreme.

  “But while I was dying, I had this… epiphany,” she smiled, looking into the air before her as though seeing it again. “I was so free, I was out of my body, flying around. And then I realized… I was an angel.” She aimed incredulous green eyes at him that made his heart beat faster. “And there was this other angel there, and he pointed down and I looked. And I saw me lying there on the floor and my father screaming and crying.” The agony in her angelic face for somebody else while she was dying… utterly fascinating. “And… I was so, so, sad for him. And I just knew that… I had to go back. To take away his pain. Anything to take away his pain. Even if it meant facing the nightmares, I would just have to do it.” She wiped tears from her face and finally angled her bright green gaze at him, making Sade lower his. He suddenly didn’t want to see the raw purity there. Just felt… wrong. The blasphemous kind of wrong.

  “I really need the bathroom.”

  “Oh!” she reached and wagged the empty jar at him.

  Sade eyed it, then her. “You plan on helping with that?”

  She bit her lower lip, thinking. “I better. I don’t trust you not to be stupid.”

  “Smart girl.” His dick twitched at the idea of her touch and what it would feel like. The big question was would he like it while not in a frenzy of sadism? The excitement in his body said he wanted to like it.

  “I am a nurse,” she reminded more herself than him. “I’ve seen my fair share of genitals.”

  “Have you,” he muttered, liking that she did a bad job of hiding her frayed nerves on that front. “Then why are you nervous?”

  “Well, this isn’t exactly your typical medical condition.” Honesty as usual. His body had a positive response to it. She pulled the covers down over his naked groin and raging erection that she seemed to deliberately not notice. His cock laid thick on his abs, waiting.

  “Better hurry.”

  “Coming.” The sing song word came breathy and Sade grunted when she took hold of his dick between two fingers and placed it inside the jar. “Aaand go.”

  Of course Sade’s body refused to cooperate. He knew why too. He wanted to have a fucking orgasm, not take a piss. And once he was done pissing, this would be over. He didn’t want it to end and his body didn’t want it to end. “It’s not coming.”

  “We can wait a few seconds,” she said with ease.

  “I hold my balls when I piss.”

  “Oh. Hm.” She looked around and grabbed his empty milk cup and placed it between his legs and barely pushed on his balls.

  Sade’s dry laughter boomed out.

  “What? I’m not touching them with my hand. For this.”

  For this! His cock jumped in the jar at that little surprise promise. Or was it a slip? Had she meant to say it? It was just as good as a promise coming from her and he’d hold her to it. A charity hand job? Is that what she was thinking of doing? He was desperate enough to not care why she did it, just so she did.

  He’d let her play her mercy games with him for a while and see where they took him. If he liked it, he’d play. If not, he’d make his move. She’d earned a little gold star for effort even if he didn’t agree with her noble stupid cause. And maybe she’d earned a little respect. Maybe. That verdict was still out and she could surely lose it at any time.

  He finally managed to piss.

  “Oh,” she said in alarm as the jar got really full. “Wow, you were at maximum capacity.”

  He gave a low grunt and tilted his hips making his cock rub against the container. “Fuck,” he whispered, laying his head back.

  “What? Does it hurt?” She carefully screwed the lid on the jar.

  “Yes it fucking hurts. I need to…” he couldn’t bring himself to even say it. Pissed him off that she would have that kind of power over him.

  “Okay,”
she said quietly, setting the golden juice on the breakfast tray and hurrying off like she were afraid to hear it. Oh he was sure she was. Anything to do with sex turned her into a skittish lamb.

  For the three days, Sade played the perfect patient. Mercy played the perfect nurse. On the fourth day of her nursing, his dick was ready to implode. She’d done her healing therapy with him which included soft touching, sweet words of encouragement. He wasn’t sure what he needed more, to have a raging orgasm or vomit.

  He was sure that he was done. And he had his plan in line. Break out and put her right where he was. Play doctor on her like she did on him. She could sure use some sexual therapy. Sade new it was foolish to try and yet also knew he would. Having her tied up knowing his sadism had its sights on her was dangerous.

  It came on the fourth day, his answer to that wicked prayer. “I need you to make a phone call for me,” he said.

  “Oh?” she asked, removing the breakfast tray.

  “I need Tabitha to come over. For thirty minutes. In this room. And I need privacy.”

  She stared at him while holding the tray. Amazing how her brows furrowed with a look of pure confusion. But that other thing was there he was looking for. A spark of jealousy. The idea that she was jealous had presented itself a few times and he wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Right then, he knew. He felt impossibly aroused with it.

  “I need to fucking release. She’s good at hand jobs,” Sade lied, eying her, waiting for that impossible verdict.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said, turning.

  “Why not,” he demanded.”

  She turned at the door. “Tonight, I will help you with that.”

  Before he could respond, she walked out. Fuck yes. “Just how do you plan to do that?” he yelled to her.